To wonder if the Doctors strike will still go ahead next week?

[Netcurtainnelly]

Does anyone know when it will be decided if the strike will be called off because of the flu next week?

What do you think about it?

This is absolutely correct. I was a junior doctor in the 1980s. There has always been a pyramid of opportunities to progress. Those that couldn’t get the next job went into General practice alongside those that chose that in the first place. Plenty of doctors left to go to Australia and New Zealand then too. No one has ever had a desk of their own, had their exams paid for, expected to earn lots (that comes when you become a consultant or GP). I lived through those 120 hour weeks, seldom able to eat food when the canteen was open because the bleep went off, and surviving on toast from the nurses on the ward and Quality Street. I know it’s a case of “boomers know nothing” but if you went into medicine for the pay and the working conditions, you chose the wrong career.

There is always a poster on these threads that tries to undermine the plight of resident doctors and portray them in a less than flattering light...

\No one needs to portray them in a less than flattering light, they are are managing to do that all by themselves.

Some people need to maybe shadow a junior doctor for the week and see the reality

The point is that it has always been a very difficult, demanding, exhausting job. It used to be worse and our generation fought for the improvement in hours worked. The people who need to shadow a junior doctor are the sixth formers who want to apply to read medicine. They used to like to accept applicants who had doctors in the family as they had a more realistic view of what they were choosing.

The problem is that on the surface it can look ok as there is no way of giving the sixth formers a taste of the weight of responsibility that all doctors carry alongside having to prioritise appropriately and work in a highly pressurised system.

These things - responsibility, prioritisation and pressure are not in any way a monopoly of resident doctors. They apply 100% to nurses for a start, but also to so many other jobs and professions. I think what might do more good is not sixth formers shadowing doctors but resident doctors shadowing jobs with at least the same amount of stress and at least as challenging work conditions. Some of these jobs will pay more, admittedly, but plenty will pay less - far less.

It's very irritating to hear these doctors complaining when they actually haven't got a clue how the other 75% live. A sharp injection of reality really is needed.

Ther are plenty of opportunities to shadow doctors we have a yearlong scheme where local sixth formers can experience a week shadowing.

Our current resident are not complaining about responsibilities they are complaining about everything else - exam fees have now joined the list of gripes but this is not a new issue - professional exams cost monies - this is not a generational thing.
Loans have been around for nearly 30 yrs and before that many doctors doing second degrees paid fees and many others did but people did not realise.

Food avsilability is easier than it ever was - delivery srevices - deliveroo, just eats mean getting food of a quality they would have at home is much easier

They are not poor, they are not worked to the bone day in day out, they have debt liek every student in the country and yes it might be slightly more thsn some but then if they get a guaranteed job which they want for life - then it will get paid back.

They are in for a big shock when they become consultants on the reality of making monies form private practice hits home, the consultant salary is not much higher than their resident salary and that does come with immense responsibiitiy claim a hardship of yesteryear not recognising that so much has improved and still has some way to go but please do not tell me your 44 hr week equates to what some of oyur consultants did of 120+ hrs per week and say you are as tired it is insulting.

You chose medicine - no one forced you into it. The exams, fees, hard work and pay are nothing new.
Just stop whining, playing the woe is me my life is hard whilst \i walk past a gaggle of oyu at 1030 in starbucks sipping lattes and heading outt he door at 1630 because your shift has ended. Professionals do not clock watch - they od the joba nd accpet some days are easier than others, some days oyu stay late for a greater good and other days you finish early and get a fe wmore hours to your self.

When one sees the unpleasant , uneducated vitriol towards doctors expressed by people here no wonder they’re leaving in droves .
Why on Earth , when you’re highly educated & have so many other opportunities, would you want to work in a broken system for people with these spiteful opinions who seem to lazy to google what is actually happening within the NHS ?
Working conditions are demonstrably far worse than when I started .
We had an excellently structured system , well staffed , including support & education from properly trained nurses . Records didn’t go missing . We had plenty of beds for patients who needed them & good community support . Wards were clean .
Now it’s a miserable , unsafe mess .

one would respecfully suggest that the medical school that chose the candidates of 2018 - did not know what they were doing and how to select wannabe doctors in the first place. To have those stats suggests profound ignorance of the what is needed and they have wasted tax payers monies.

Nail on the head. Given the sheer number of people applying for medical school places and the huge number of people who don't get in, I've always through the selection processes were flawed, even moreso with the number of doctors who either leave the profession, move abroad, or end up working only 1 or 2 days per week. We need to improve selection to get those more likely to stay and preferably more likely to work closer to full time. If we wanted so many part timers and people leaving, we should have massively increased medical school places accordingly. But of course the BMA voted against that!

It would be really easy wouldn’t it ? No need to look for a sense of vocation , high academic ability & demonstrated dedication to working hard as we have at the moment .
Just a simple question will do : ‘Are you prepared to amass a huge debt to work 12 hour shifts in an unsupported ,unsafe , miserable system , unappreciated & abused by the hard of thinking ? -Sounds good ? You’re in ! ‘

I would find your responses drole if the subject wasn’t so very serious .

What is more likely ? That a highly experienced selection panel of consultants across medical disciplines & academic professors ( who had worked in the NHS for many years ) got things wrong in the case of 70 young people with exemplary academic records and sense of vocation or that the candidates learned it is impossible to practise effective, safe medicine in the current environment?
The poor old NHS is in its death throes but the cause is decades of political interference as it’s been carved up and privatised . The fault doesn’t lie at the feet of the medical staff

I don’t think it’s wrong to question why the intake is skewed towards a certain demographic
it’s clearly not working

fixing things should run hand in hand with questioning if the recruitment process is selecting the right fit for a very difficult but rewarding career

widening the net should be encouraged

Accountant and lawyer mistakes are not potentially lethal.

I ignore this poster with the inappropriate username and unpleasant posts.

There was a poster like this on other doctor threads too.

It’s catch 22 though isn’t it. The doctors I know who work part time either say:

1. I earn enough in 3 days to keep me happy so I’d rather have the time off, or;
2. there is so much work to do I work 3 days otherwise I’d burn out, or;
3. I can’t get more hours. The position isn’t there.

If they all worked full time then they’d be less stressed. Upping the pay isn’t going to incentivise this though. It could do the opposite. The government is too tight to provide enough positions for the GPs who want to work more to fill. This is an issue.

Resident Dr's goes from newly qualified to work without supervision to just below Consultant.

The idea that they're all exhausted working shifts in A and E is false. Many have 9-5 jobs in other areas where they earn extremely well with much reduced responsibility.

It's the BMA who go with pulling the heartstrings and suggesting all resident Dr's are on their knees with stress and overwork.

It's not universally true.

And all the resident Dr's I know who are striking want more money. The strikes worked before so they're banking on striking resulting in more pay regardless of the government saying it won't.

They want ridiculous 'pay restoration' and really don't give a shit how unsupported they are by the public or even their own colleagues.

There are a number who don't support the strikes however and I applaud them.

High academic ability? Pull the other one. 25% of school leavers get enough A levels to do medicine now (particularly as they aren't so fussy now about which A levels).
They also all seem to be so dense they didn't realise that medicine is competitive. Just getting a medical school place does not guarantee them a job for life, and that seems to have come as a shock to most of them.

Nursing mistakes most certainly can be; lawyer mistakes can have incredibly serious consequences affecting health and well being, depending on the area of law.

It's also fair to say that it's wildly hyperbolic to represent resident doctors as always working on the edge of life. Much of the daily grind will be very mundane; some doctors will never be responsible for life/ death decisions throughout their entire career - again, depending on specialty.

And 'a sense of vocation 'doesn't usually include waltzing off and leaving other people to do your work.

Accounting mistakes can also lead to prison sentences right?

You need to read my post. I was not taking about edge of life incidents so why are you saying that? Prescribing the wrong medication in non-acute settings can cause significant harm.

Talking about life/death situations I am not sure why you are so confident in your assertions as you seem quite ignorant about the fact resident doctors carry the crash bleep from F1 onwards. Those are often life/death situations.

Duplicate post

But not death of another human being. Bizarre that you seem to put equal emphasis on risk to human life and accounting mistakes.

I have read your post. You're way over egging the normal daily routine of a resident doctor.