To finally agree with a junior doctors strike

[Horsehow]

Junior doctors have decided to strike as they are being overlooked for jobs / training posts which are instead given to international applicants. I’ve always abhorred their money grabbing strikes in the past, but support this one 100%. UK doctors should be recruited where possible, and international graduates only turned to where we cannot find a suitable recruit in the UK.

I’ve worked in North America as well as in the UK, and honestly the discourse is the same - I don’t think it is the NHS specifically. It’s “people having had enough of experts” (both patients and MDT/management), plus increased fear of litigation/complaints.

Consultants unemployed too, not enough posts. Which is ridiculous. But then NHS leaders are not really all that good at workforce planning.

Ridiculous? Absolutely. Because there is no such thing as an unemployed consultant.

You only become a consultant once you have competed successfully for a consultant post. If you don't make it, you choose a different line of work, and you don't put "unemployed consultant" on your CV. (Without foreign graduates filling the middle grades who elect to return to their countries of origin rather than take a consultant post, there would be an awful lot more UK graduates in that situation).

Interesting. Nonetheless, the fact remains that seniority means substantially less than it once did, and that is demotivating.

Off topic, but they really should not have used AI to generate that image without checking it. I see a bearded man in a skirt and heels, some random blindfolded patient, somebody else with a hideous facial deformity (just a very large mouth, no eyes or nose, like a Rainbow Friend), two completely bald women, a terrible case of scoliosis, and then the front row wearing their white coats backwards with their stethoscopes strangling them. It’s quite disturbing once you start looking closely at it.

@Marchesman there are unemployed consultants at the moment, applying for posts but not many out there. I know 2 newly CCT A&E consultants who can't leave London as always been here (from Uni), but lack of jobs at moment. Fortunately locum shifts keeping the mortgage paid.

Its harder to just move to the other end of the country mid 30s. Family ties and mortgages. Many unemployed GPs too. These are just facts. From NHSE.

What do you call someone post CCT if not a consultant ?

Misled.

But arguably not as misled as those many young people who are sold the myth that all medical schools are equal and that glittering NHS prizes lie ahead if only they can get their foot through a medical school - any medical school - door.

The MN threads on medical school applications have peddled this for years. It’s misinformation with potentially serious real life consequences for those young people.

This encouraged me to look at one of these, and I found "Medicine 2026 Part 2", started by a regular poster on such matters. In it she says "Actually, getting in is the hardest bit. Once there, they'll do all they can to keep you," which one would have to say does somewhat gloss over the attrition rate. And "love" for the job is promised, rather than any hint of the dreadful satisfaction levels of the unfortunates previously "supported" into medicine by their mothers.

Decades ago, when academics started messing about with the selection process, it was obvious that it would end in tears, but I doubt anyone foresaw this horror show.

If you divide that starting salary by your £19/hr then divide by 52 that would imply that F1s are working 39 hour weeks - a F1 doctor's standard week is 48 hours, which starts to make the hourly rate look a bit different.

Last weekend, having worked 56 hours during the week already my daughter was offered £24/hr to work on a Sunday, this is in central London. The band 3 in my place of work gets more than that for working a Sunday bank shift. She declined the shift as she was on the rota to work 12.5 hours mon/tues/weds so wanted to be fit for work - and also to actually see her partner.

They don't get 'almost double time for Christmas Day'. At the start of each rotation their rota is looked at and the % of hours that are nights, weekend and on calls are worked out and this is their pay. So their hourly pay for Christmas Day is effectively same as their hourly pay at 10am on a Wednesday morning.

Not at my trust. We have no universities in our patch so maybe we pay higher as we struggle to recruit.

Marchesman yes, and this year’s thread is significantly more subdued than in recent years. I assume the regular posters have acknowledged the realities that they’ve been confronted with on these training post threads. The fact remains that incredibly poor advice has been given, and while the league of mothers might enjoy their warmly supportive club for a while, far too many of their DC have been done no favours at all. Anyone trying to give sound advice has always been met with the ludicrous charges of intellectual snobbery and disrespecting the young people who have to study a spreadsheet every which way to see which medical school might possibly accept them.

And yet, we have unemployed doctors. The consultants of 2048.

@TeenLifeMum doctors pay is standardised ? Locums aren't but normal pay is. And it is £17.33 an hour - it's on their payslip.

Agree wholeheartedly.

It would seem not.

The current BMA leadership seems to pretty much make numbers up. Each and every claim is massively misrepresented. The detail matters if they want to be credible. Currently they’re not.

This is The Lancet ? Do they 'exaggerate' too ?

Not for over time/back shifts etc Regionally they try to agree rate cards, the union has their suggested rate card, but trusts set their own rate card.

But standard pay is the same ? That £17.33 an hour is the same throughout England (more in Scotland and about to be Wales).

Apologies, it's now an enormous £18.62 an hour. But no uplift for Xmas day (or any bank holiday). Just standard pay. F1s are the lowest paid people on the hospital in any bank holiday

You are right to be sceptical. In this case Mumsneedwine refers to a paper in the Lancet that makes predictions for the future physician workforce, but they are incompatible with government policy which explicitly plans to move resources into the community. From this, the BMA (and Mumsneedwine) have selected a soundbite that serves their respective purposes.

As opposed to, for example: "Increased rates of less than full time working and planned reductions in the intake of overseas doctors would both negatively impact WTE numbers and increase the shortfall from 11,000 to approximately 13,000 and 15,500 respectively by 2048."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(25)00248-0/fulltext

On the separate matter of pay which is being discussed yet again, in the last financial year, before the most recent pay rise, F1s were paid on average £43,275, i.e. more than the average remuneration of every other degree.

Thanks again Marchesman. I hold my hands up to being a sceptic, certainly about the headline screen shots that have peppered these threads, masquerading as 'evidence'. I'm struggling to think of a single one which hasn't yet been deconstructed, usually with a contextual explanation. If we're going to talk about 'awesomeness' then I have to say, I'm utterly in awe at how both informed and plain old common sense interpretations of this flimsy 'evidence' can be ignored so roundly (and often so rudely), when each and every assertion has been successfully shot down.

Honestly your opinion is really unbelievable since the stats you fail to believe are from robust sources.

Why believe facts when you can believe fantasy ? It's Trumps modus operandi. Bonkers, but makes some people happy.