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.

To everyone reading this thread, do your own research and always ask to see a doctor as v often you won't be (but they won't tell you). Look at the IMT scores this year and the upset this has caused.
ED waits currently at 18 hours locally whilst UK doctors are unemployed.

Completely agree. There has been a lot of smoke and mirrors on these threads.

Are you able to explain exactly what you mean about smoke and mirrors PurpleFairyLights, and perhaps help the rest of us by pointing to even three or four specific examples?

As for research, for anyone not already well informed, I would suggest digging a little deeper than the headline screenshots which pepper the various threads on this subject and mirror the lack of depth of understanding of some of the more prolific posters (especially the posters who re-post the same screenshots incessantly, with no context whatever).

Anyone interested will read the threads and make up their own minds either way.

As expected. Thank you for the confirmation PFL.

So a further improved offer from Wes, but BMA still not accepting primarily due to pay which has already gone up 30% in three years. Kind of supports my point I think

BBC News Link

£15.33 to £18.12 an hour. How much do you pay your cleaner ? Still earn more as a barrister at Costa. Definitely more as a Physician associate. And you earn nothing if unemployed (which lots ipf fully qualified doctors currently are). Wes is a liar.

And BMA have not rejected his offer. They have put it to their members to decide on. They are a union that's their job.

They will be asked whether to call off the strike, that’s what I took from this morning’s radio. I guess no one knows how it’ll go.

They already have been asked. Went out today. No more jobs offered (just juggling current roles), no more money to restore their pay, and apparently UKG prioritisation can be done as an emergency for this year (but he won't do it unless they call off strike). Weird, as a few weeks ago he said it wasn't possible until 2027 ??? So he either lied then or is doing so now.

Unpopular opinion.
they don't need a pay increase.
my dc who is an F1 earns rather a lot as a new university graduate, gathers up quite a lot of extra hours now that they are in a different ward and will come close to what I earn as a teacher with 26 years experience.

Teachers are vastly underpaid, but appreciate that's a different issue

This upcoming strike, if it goes ahead, will not win them any public sympathy

My d reckons that f2 doctors will vote to accept the offer because the prioritisation of uk grads will help their year group - but there's nothing about the longer term... The rest of the email is a lot of arm waving but no real substance. My impression was that it's was sent so that the media will be told 'we tried but the resident doctors are not willing to negotiate' - basically media spin.

There is no substance behind the UKG priority. Same as the Leng review and exception reporting (both he promised to implement and neither have been done).
I'm a teacher. We are definitely underpaid. But my DD earned £15.33 on Xmas day as an F1, and it's because of striking yours now earns more.

You are right. NHS England publishes annual figures for NHS salaries and no amount of wittering on Mumsnet from the usual suspects about F1/F2s being paid less than cleaners can obscure that. A medical graduate this year entered guaranteed employment and will earn more than £45,000 in the first year, rising to more than £55,000 in the second (not counting further pay awards).

The fact is that on the whole we have become demonstrably poor at selecting the right people for the job. There is an industry shovelling poorly advised people into medicine, and nothing will make those who should have made different choices into happy people.

Thanks for explaining strikes to me!

Whether the doctors have a decent case or not, striking is destroying the standing of the profession.

It’ll be like teaching: once highly respected, now perceived as a home for a politically motivated militant rabble. Frequent striking and shouting on picket lines did the damage.

Ooh I quite like the idea of me, being 60 and v politically neutral, being part of a militant rabble. I'm far too knackered to be shouting anywhere.

But because of that exact attitude the profession now doesn't have enough members to staff the classrooms. Same will happen with medicine. Want a doctor ? You'll need to go abroad. Even the IMGs mostly only stay a few years.

You've mixed up cause and effect. "Good behaviour" didn't work out very well for doctors. Erosion of pay, worsening conditions for working and training, erosion of professional autonomy, rising contempt from public/press - this all happened before the industrial action ever started. Dr Bawa Gaba never went on strike. Public standing? A section of the public is and will always be happy to hang doctors out to dry, and I suspect you're one of them.

Put up and shut up, have my "respect" whilst your profession goes down the pan and then I'll blame you for the repercussions. Let's see how that's working out for nurses. No thank you.

There is no point in doctors trying to court public opinion. Do a good job because you value the work and take pride in it but don't count on gratitude or respect from the public. The sad truth is that the public's "respect" is a meaningless, empty platitude and the people who wave it around like a trophy to be won or lost don't give a shit about doctors and have never had any respect for them anyway.

Public "standing" - by which I think you mean indifference and ignorance, at best - doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't address the training & retention crisis. It doesn't address the future workforce crisis. It doesn't address the safety crisis presented by inadequately supported inferiorly trained noctors. Etc etc

You couldn’t be more wrong, in every respect.

You couldn't be more right, in every respect

Absolutely agree