To think the BMA have misjudged with another doctor's strike?

[Locutus2000]

Last year they got more than anyone else in the NHS along with an improved deal. Nurses and other AHPs received lower rises.

BMA have just announced another 'resident' doctor strike continuing to chase pay restoration to 2008 levels.

Having just had the major win with changes to IMG prioritisation and the clamp-down on PAs it feels a bit tone-deaf and I can't see Streeting going for it.

Edit: look up the pay bands

@poetryandwine PAs earn 30% more than SHOs. Why ? If there’s money for a PA who can’t prescribe and is not medically qualified then why not for a doctor. If doctors were on the same scale as everyone else in the NHS they’d start on £15,000 more due to their responsibility.

@poetryandwine it seems again that the need to talk about consultants pay is because everyone knows residents are not paid well for the job they do.

Again, the strike is by Resident doctors, not consultants. Different pay scales

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/11/doctors-strike-threatens-swamp-nhs-turnaround-bma-overreached

Says it all really......

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15wxn851eqo
At least someone has the courage to come out with an opinion ....I think the majority of the public would back him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15wxn851eqo

It was you talking about that graph, which was not a graph of salaries.

F1 and F2 are in the same position as equally intelligent and hardworking postgraduate students - including those working on cures for fatal diseases - except the former make over 50% more. Specialist trainees are comparable to either advanced PGs or to postdoctoral researchers in the sciences - again including medical researchers.

The specialist trainees are all higher rate taxpayers, as basic pay starts at £49,900 and they all get top ups. The postdocs are making salaries in the £30’s. If they are lucky enough to find a lectureship, they will not be higher rate taxpayers at its start. Most so called assistants - a regrettable word for people who have their own spheres of responsibility - are not higher rate taxpayers.

Senior Registrar basic salaries are well over £80K and the step rises are automatic. For academics, that is a professor’s salary.

If they deserve pay restoration so do Teachers Police and all Government workers. Tax will have to go up enormously to pay for it and Guess what they will all be much worse off

im sorry but they are just being greedy

Good for Robert Winston, hopefully more will follow him.

Let's just pay doctors shed loads and scrap the NHS?

I think the general opinion amongst may NHS AHP colleagues is that doctors are taking the piss generally and they are greedy f%ckers. Trusts are now having desperately to fill in staff gaps because of the strikes and no one seems to give a sh&t about patients (remember those, ill people who pay taxes to pay NHS salaries?)

doctors have already had inflation busting pay rises so this is really a step too far. It will be the nurses next and given the NHS spend is mainly on staffing we will soon be having discussions about its viability. Trusts are already concerned with job losses at NHS England and we all have to save cash with major deficits so how is this going to help?????

I’m guessing it’s irrelevant whether I am or not. 🙄

I’ve looked up pay.

This seems accurate only if we take SHO to mean F1/F2. But medics are at this level for only 2 years.

IF they can get specialist training - and here I agree there is a big problem - they have excellent automatic step rises as I discussed above. A Senior Registrar makes more than the typical top - banded PA, though I am sure there are exceptions. Medics have the potential to progress to senior level consultants with pay over £150K pa.

It is similar to how doctoral students begin training on just over £20K, less than teachers, but have the potential to make much more than teachers as professors.

agree Polly. As a moderately senior manager in the NHS, paid reasonably, but not amazingly, it frustrates me that 'medics' as we call them are put on a different pedestal. I (along with my colleagues) am the mug in the middle who gets paid no overtime, and works like a dog, fighting desperately against the ludicrous bureaucracy the NHS throws at me - We get told by DHSC that we have too much bureaucracy and need to cut it out so what's the first thing we do? Have a series of meetings and introduce 3 extra levels of approval for anything remotely progressive to happen.

The pay and recruitment controls fall on the nurses, radiographers, administrators etc and the medics largely carry on unaffected. The pretty cylindrical hierarchy means they are all but guaranteed promotion and pay rises to consultant, with opportunities beyond and they all have 'SPA' built into their job plans. Many treat this as time off.

It used to be that doctors were paid extremely well and this partly compensated for all the extra uncounted work, and the responsibility. Now they have excellent pay (particularly consultants, which generally they can reach by age 35) and great working conditions (4 day working)and opportunities for extra work, paid at very enhanced rates andextra payments for on-call duties. The high pay of senior doctors is contributing to the staffing crisis as many are willing to work part time as they can manage perfectly well on 60-80% of the pay.

Time for a reckoning? I would caveat by saying though the overall look is bad, there are still many who work extremely hard and don't pinch the pennies (pounds) for every extra minute they work.

The BMA is not popular in many hospital trusts up and down the country this week. Patients will suffer, cancer treatment will be delayed and waiting lists will lengthen.

Those at the bottom of the food chain are facing real cost of living problems yet those at the top want to stretch the pay gap.

Doctors really need to stop comparing themselves with the ludicrous excesses of commercial sector executive pay and think about those who make their hospitals and surgeries work.

Agree with this.....

The way the Spire have built two new hospital units since COVID near us in Wales got me thinking. Would the NHS start leasing off failing hospitals to the private sector if they were interested or would the private sector continue to build their own from scratch.

I have no respect for any of these so called 'doctors' who plan to strike. To me, these are the doctors who should be stripped of their qualifications. Disgusting. If this is really happening I think we need to question what sort of young people are being accepted into medical school these days. There should be no place for such 'entitlement' and lack of empathy or duty in such an important profession.

The NHS has very little state of the art infrastructure. It would be cheaper to build new than bring current buildings up to modern standards.

@mumsneedwine
You seem to have strong views but very little knowledge about the profession currently and historically. F1 remuneration is better than it was in 2008, when the hours were longer. They are less well educated now on average, they have substantially less responsibility, and soak up more hours of adult supervision. You may have drunk the BMA's "expert clinician" Kool Aid but the reality is very different.

One reason that there are too many of them for the available jobs is that compared with the outside world, and despite the protestations of a minority, it is a relatively cushy number.

Was looking at consultant surgeons in the NHS and private sector the other week . One consultant was £300 for 15 minutes , the other £200 for 15 minutes. Now I don't know the nett figure after paying BUPA, Spire their cut. I'm kind of glad that they do get to operate in the private sector freely because I don't know how rationed surgery is in the NHS sector.

Thank you Blossom I did wonder.

There's an Australian company who want in on private medicine as well as American funds. We're a pretty untapped resource in the UK.

My friends son a junior doctor during the last strike was all over social media and very pro the strike. This time not a peep out of him.

My son is desperate to be a dr and has wanted this since about age 5. I have tried to talk him out of it due to the terrible pay and condition. He is determined. Whether he will be able to get into medical school remains to be seen. It’s incredibly competitive and then lots of the drs end up unemployed at the end of it!
So if he then did finally manage to become a junior dr and then decided to strike at the pay and conditions I would think it was a bit ridiculous. People are fighting for places for medical school and then for the job at the end of it. They know what the pay and conditions are. They know that could get paid a lot more doing a different job but they are choosing to do this job.

So I think their pay and conditions need to be fair but no more so than nurses, fire fighters, police, teachers etc. They may well end up in 100 grands worth of debt to train to be a doctor but that is clear when they apply to medical school. It’s not a surprise.

I may not have explained the above very well but I just think it’s silly to apply for a job, get it then immediately protest about it.

i still am amazed that people do not want to pay those who care for their loved ones a good salary. They help keep people alive. That’s pretty damn special in my book.
Medical/nursing and also HCA’s do all the stuff that the general public doesn’t want to do.
you don’t think they are special until you need them- then you suddenly think they are amazing.
strange that.
You have a relative dying, or needing lifesaving measures, or just needing a script- then you think a Dr is useful.
when it comes to keeping your relatives safe and escalated if not- that’s your nurses. But yeah- pay them crap wages, then you know what you will get- crap care.
Eg, medics and nurses who are unable to converse with your relative. Unable to communicate any concerns. Not used to the system. Not to mention the fact that a large percentage of overseas doctors are pretty useless. Reference for this - my working experience. The last 5 years has shown that we have ruined our hospitals. We have a massive influx of nurses and doctors who are not as capable as homegrown. And that is being polite.

@Daisy12Maisie but that’s the point. 8 years ago, when current F2s were applying, pay and job prospects were different. They knew they’d never be rich but they thought they’d have a job and be able to pay their bills. Post Covid they are facing unemployment and a wage of £18 an hour. Anyone going into medicine now needs to know that pay is rubbish and unemployment is likely.