To think the BMA have misjudged with another doctor's strike? Thread 2

[Locutus2000]

Rolling this over as people still seem to have something to say but no new poll.

Original post

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

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.

Yeah i no longer have sympathy for them, and I always support the tube drivers

Dunno, why didnt they hold out for the same increases for nurses and cleaning staff etc 🤷‍♀️

Just dont care this time around tbh, if that makes me mean, so be it

But didn't the BMA make a way over the top proposal about student loans that the government couldn't possibly accept?

The BMA were determined to strike; no genuine interest in negotiations.

That was to FixTheBone.

Not at all clear if it's for the people they're supposed to represent or their own future political careers.

Absolutely no mention of student loans in the official response feom the government, which suggests it wasn't raised by either side. I suspect the BMA cant raise it, since it isnt directly related to their member's pay or contract conditions. But, IANAL, hopefully i can be corrected on that point, my understanding is you cant raise a point unrelated to contract terms or pay as a reason for indistrial action.

Yes, an FYI now is comparable to a JHO (Junior House Officer).

An SHO was a promotion and usually with a couple of years experience and moving towards specialising in an area. Next step after that would be Registrar.

I think they are an absolute disgrace. They’ve already had a hefty pay rise, which they accepted, and now they are trying to blackmail the government for more. They know that patients will die as a result of this and they don’t care. Public trust and respect for doctors has gone.

agenda for change pay scales (all non medical NHS pay grades) and doctors pays scales are a completely separate negotiation. So if ‘nurses ‘ get a pay rise I ( as a radiographer ) also benefit but the doctors do not and vice versa .

Fewer doctors than last time striking than last time so the message must be getting through that this does not have public support. Listened to an interview with a long term sufferer of a chronic hip condition who was in tears when his appointment was cancelled.

I was wondering why the focus on restoring pay to 2008 levels? Why not 2005 or 2010?
Sorry if I missed this on the earlier thread.

I still find resident doctors are still tone dead to those that are the most important part of this, patients.

I don't think some of the doctors in the press defending their case really have a broad picture of society where not everyone is from a middle class family with a stream of top A levels and a good education behind them. I know medics need good qualifications which is fair bit an unfortunate by product is a sense of entitlement especially with regards to renumeration; there doesn't seem to be any sense of vocation. It's very much a I'oreal strike (because I'm worth it).

I also think that there is in some sense betrayal is the true principles of unionised Labour which was very much born out of working class poverty and an oppressive elite which shaped our country.

@Marchesman @poetryandwine I would use probability as part of the explanation for young students - they tend to find it easier to latch on to and use for problem break down, even if each decision is binary.

It really isn’t a complex problem in terms of logic steps/gates. Children are typically very good at this if its broken down to the gates and the probability/decision at each step. There are no abstracts or ethics with which to conjure - just a simple sequence of decisions. Its no more complex than very basic electronics.

I’m genuinely astonished that a bunch of law students struggled with this problem, even if they left their STEM subjects behind at 16. Formal logic used to be a part of studying law I thought. Medical schools still require chemistry and physics or maths at A level, they really should not struggle with this kind of problem.

Melissa Ryan’s interviews are beyond embarrassing.

When I said duff negotiating I didn’t realise she was this bad.

She’s going to be the poster girl for inarticulate greedy doctors who seem unable to answer the simplest of questions.

Because neither 2005 or 2010 support the nonsensical claim that UK doctors are the worst treated people in the world. Ditto choosing either CPI or RPI at different points to inflate the supposed gap. Ditto selecting the two or three sectors as comparators where pay has done better across a short period BMA graphs (whilst not mentioning the massive job losses and lack of platinum pensions and public sector perks in those same sectors). Ditto comparing UK salaries to the superficially high salaries in the US (but not mentioning their massive student debts or lack of pension/perks) rather than European doctors who are often on lower pay scales than in the UK.

Meanwhile in the real world every sector saw pay and job losses after the 2008 crash. Some sectors have done particularly badly but they never feature on these fantasy pay comparisons.

Having had nearly 30% pay rises over the past two years whilst fellow health workers were pegged much, much lower and much of the private sector has seen job losses its not surprising that they have lost so much public sympathy and the additional load falls on their less well paid colleagues. Nurses, HCAs, the staff who try to keep hospitals clean and functioning on minimum wage - none of them have had a fraction of the pay rise of doctors but their pay has to come out of the same overall pot.

I was also surprised at what @Marchesman said about student reasoning. I don’t doubt it, however.

The analogy with electronics is a good one. Decision trees, which can be used to compute probabilities - is that your probability tie in? - or truth tables could be used. As we can easily deduce whether each of the white diamond, black circle and white circle is or is not a thog, this is strictly a logic puzzle.

Most who can do these puzzles easily don’t need to do them formally. Having a good, graphic way to communicate your thinking really is a higher order task.

@C8H10N4O2 A similar problem is the Monty Hall problem, based on an old American game show. (Monty Hall was the first host)

A prize is concealed behind one of three doors, humorous duds behind the others. You pick a door at random. The host, who knows where the prize is, opens one of the doors to show you a dud. Then she offers you a chance to swap your guess. What shpuld you do?

Statistically, go for the swap. You had a 1/3 chance of being correct. Nothing has changed that. But now the 2/3 chance that the prize was behind one of the other doors is all on the door you have the opportunity to swap to.

Many find this paradoxical, but experiment helps. Children enjoy doing physical experiments in teams with index cards and small objects. Loads of online simulations, also.

Ten trials tells you nothing but 50 trials with swaps should yield close to 33 successes and 100 even closer to 66. This is the Law of Large Numbers in action. ( That is a theorem relating the number of positive outcomes over many trials to the probability of a positive outcome for one trial. Intuitive idea, actually quite deep.)

2008 is also not without its issues.

The European Working Time Directive was still in effect until the following year. So the BMA are comparing current pay with a period when they were working on average 8 hours longer each week.

I don't understand why the press and government haven't utterly discredited them.

@C8H10N4O2 @poetryandwine I don't understand how probability figures in this, or the relevance of the Monty Hall problem.

Can you explain how you solved the problem using probability?

@Marchesman the Monty Hall problem is a genuine problem in probability. It is also easy but seems difficult in that framing the key issue is where people trip up. It shares this with the thog problem.

Some of the waiting lists are so long that for some on them this is the second resident doctors’ strike. Many tears of both pain and frustration, I am sure

I cannot understand why they elected her. There was a recent Opinion piece in the Guardian supporting the strike, although the hundreds of Online Comments it attracted were against by a large ratio, and as far as I can see what recommends her in the eyes of her supporters is that she leads the We Know Our Worth brigade.

When anyone in those Comments points out that the money just isn’t there for what resident doctors think they are worth and optionals like buying lifesaving drugs, fixing hospitals that should be condemned, etc to say nothing of other HCP salaries, the few supporting the strike just say that people who want these things need their own advocates. Appalling.

Lots of moaning amongst strike supporters in those Comments about the cost of living in London on £70K as if no other YP face this challenge. I do sympathise with the problems for a relationship when being expected to relocate so frequently so WTH wasn’t this a focus of negotiations?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn7d7ng8xmzo

kidney cancer operation cancelled according to this article. Shocking. Patients will suffer and die for this. It is inexcusable in my view.

Nonetheless I am turning out for strike cover shifts this weekend because the trust was desperate for volunteers (very bad timing with lots of consultants having pre booked leave at the start of school hols) I will donate the money probably to MIND.

Things like the constant strikes and the IMF suggestion that higher earners shouldn’t receive free NHS are basically the signs that the NHS as we know it is going to go.

I watched a few interviews with Ryan earlier today:

‘I’m a paediatric registrar; I should be with the babies on the ward’. Unpleasant.

And absolutely mashed in an interview asking her what her own take home pay was (failed to answer three maybe four times: ‘We’re not here to talk about my salary’).

Her performance certainly shores up my strong belief that we have not very bright resident doctors lurking on the wards. And omg the soundbites. They were so reminiscent of the earlier threads that I wonder if she ghost wrote a lot of those posts.

Toe curling. Not especially worrying for immediate purposes, since she must be losing a lot of whatever support there is for these strikes. I should imagine Wes Streeting is delighted with her.

All the time this government and the doctors are pissing around striking just means a longer wait for my husband's appointment and operation. It will already be nearly a year just to get on the waiting list.