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?

What a wonderful example of an ignorant, spiteful post.

Two of you have posted unpleasant comments about my DC. I am afraid that shows a lot about your personality and not in a good way.

Love the assertions and you assuming my experience is second hand from my child. Wrong again.

Where have I said I am pro-BMA? I think doctors should be paid more but know country probably cannot afford.

I agree with the BMA asking for prioritsation of UK medical graduates . The UK needs to prioritise its own medical graduates just like 195 other countries. The BMA sat on the fence for too long on this issue.

I think UK medical graduate prioritisation is the issue that brings your group out of the woodwork. Your posts seek to undermine selection of medical students, quality of medical education and hint that UK medical graduates are deficient in some way.

You think consultants accompany them to crash calls? 😂

I think you are credulous in the extreme if you think anyone accompanies THEM to crash calls. They are not fully trained and are not allowed to work autonomously. I don't know how to make this simpler for you. They accompany someone with more training and experience, and if they've got any sense they try to learn from them.

You don't have to make anything "simpler" for me. I have real world experience of the reality.

I think I remember you from other threads. Possibly you said you were a doctor but never believed you.

On those threads you were going from 0 to 10 in insults. You do this to shut down discussion.

I won't be replying to any more of your ill-informed, unpleasant posts as you obviously enjoy them more than is normal.

I have never claimed to be anything. Even if I were a doctor you know that you would disbelieve me. I think you find anyone telling the truth is what you don't like.
Are you shutting down the discussion now?

Of course..

A few years after I first became involved with admissions, a group of academics who styled themselves as the Council of Heads of Medical Schools pronounced that "the social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds of medical graduates should reflect broadly the diversity of the patient population".

This meant standardising shortlisting criteria and interview questions to capture non-academic characteristics that were considered most desirable. (It also made it possible to bias these characteristics in favour of soft skills, thus jeopardising the recruitment of future orthopaedic surgeons, bacteriologists etc.) All of which in my medical school meant that we were in fact required to score according to a script.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Thanks. It might differ from place to place. I am not involved in short-listing.

I have been interviewing for many years and we moved from panel interviews to MMIs. But the interview questions themselves don’t strike me as ‘inclusive’ as such. They are really quite challenging, and each year new stations appear that incorporate new health developments and trends. The students seem the same as they ever were. We don’t know their demographics any more, but they seem broadly middle-class, lots of Asian applicants, and no obvious disabilities. It has always has been like this.We get told to embrace ND but I have had no need to do anything differently yet.

I would not want to let people in who I felt were not academically able. And I certainly didn’t ‘pass’ everyone on my station or feel any pressure to do so. I could score as I wanted last week!

Was this in the UK? I don’t see the word ‘bacteriologist’ much here?

My DD was the first (& only) doctor on Christmas Day at a crash. She did what was needed with the nurse until consultant arrived. 25 minutes later. She was F1. What should happen is not what does happen in the NHS. She was earning £15.33 that day (was 2 years ago). Would now be £18.33 (there's that mythical 29% pay rise).

@AllApptsGone your experience in admissions tally's with mine. V glad softer skills now being scored as it will mean no more horrible doctors who can't listen and are arrogant. Met a few too many of those over the years. Still need As and high UCAT.

Two days in at my trust and not a single elective surgery has been cancelled due to strikes. Not too bad imo

Medical Schools Council holds no power over Unis. They all decide how they recruit. But most now follow a similar process - because it produces good doctors. Not just wealthy ones. It's not a 'vocation' it's a career. And claps and vocations don't pay the rent.

PS the super flu has turned out to be a big fat lie ! Well according to Van Tam, who knows a thing or two about public health. Dear old Wes needs to learn not to lie.

I remember that poster from the other doctor threads. Was extremely unpleasant then too.

Unfortunately still posting absolute rubbish but has no knowledge or experience of the NHS.

Yet another attempt to undermine the massive contribution F1s make. They are called the footsoldiers of the NHS for a reason. Often the first to attend crash calls too.

Can you provide a link to this? I want to show it to my parents

Link Streeting not working unfortunately

@sleepyjessie it's on his LinkedIn (which I am v privileged to be able to read).

why when they should be paid their worth ?

Provincial Russell Group. Reductive "bacteriologist" fitted better with the point that I was making.

I think that once you start down the route of selecting for anything other than academic ability you are in trouble. We know that prior academic attainment predicts performance in postgraduate exams better than medical aptitude tests and probably better than tests of general intelligence.

He is a very ethical doctor

He is a very ethical doctor

These processes produce medical students who don't want to work for the NHS and "good doctors" who have walked out on their patients fourteen times since March 2023. And if they were all that similar there would be less scope for bad advice on admission threads.

The heads of medical schools have "no power over Unis"? Please tell me which planet you live on so I can avoid it.

The Medical School Council holds no power over how Universities apply their admissions criteria. Please read carefully. They are a v good and v helpful advisory body with no power at all.

And this is your opinion. However the vast majority of others involved in medical admissions completely disagree with you. Even Oxbridge interviews ask about those softer skills these days. Because no one wants to return to the days of arrogant doctors who didn't seem able to communicate with patients or staff. Being book smart is only one measure of intelligence. Thankfully gone are the days of getting into medical school because daddy used to go there (Adam Kay highlighted this process v clearly).

Some Senior doctors do not seem to want to be bothered to train the new generation, employing PAs, ACPs,Nurse consultants instead of doctors. They seem to forget who trained them (whilst they got free accommodation and no student loan and didn't have to move every 6 months). Most resident doctors are £100,000+ in debt and will repay £250,000 during the 30 years the loan will run. They pay their insurance indemnity, GMC fees (for what no one knows), and extortionate exam and royal college fees.

Again, claps don't pay the rent.

@PurpleFairyLights his lectures also contained railway and football analogies! He got BBB at A level, got in because his dad was a doctor (he's v open about it). Ended up head of public health during a pandemic.

There is more to being a good doctor than A levels (thankfully as some of my v v smart A level chemists would be dangerous if let lose near humans !).

And this is your opinion.

The difference is that you have no first hand experience of selection, undergraduate and postgraduate medical training, or the practice of medicine. Instead, as a self-described parent of a junior doctor and a secondary school science teacher with a medical career advisory remit, you have personal biases that I can only assume explain your lack of engagement with anything that resembles evidence and your overestimation of your competence in this field.

I explained how and why academic attainment was deprioritised. A committee formed of the heads of recruitment and admissions from a consortium of medical schools met at a northern university somewhere between 2000-2005 to develop a standardised points-based admission system, which had the specific aim of making doctors more like the patients that they serve. (In a related publication it was noted that "there is little substantive evidence that the medical profession as a whole will benefit as a result of this increased diversity in its workforce".)

A historic workforce of "arrogant doctors who didn't seem able to communicate with patients or staff" is a construct of your imagination. Although ironically it has become a problem, with graduates of PBL and post-2000 medical schools overestimating their abilities and disproportionately attracting the attentions of the GMC.

Far from not being "bothered to train" junior doctors, senior doctors are overwhelmed by the time that they spend on them, and also voted last year in overwhelming numbers to halt the roll out of PAs.

I don't even know where to start with "being book smart is only one measure of intelligence". Suffice it to say in this context that being book smart is the best predictor of progression in medicine.

As for Van-Tam, his A-levels were as good as, or better than, 45% of contemporary male entrants to medicine. He entered on the strength of attainment, nothing to do with his father's occupation - unless of course Wikipedia is correct and his father was in fact a maths teacher in Van-Tam's grammar school, because who knows, perhaps he was a careers advisor too.

@mumsneedwine completely agree. Thank goodness they are starting to realise that emotional intelligence is also very important.

Unfortunately quite a few perfect examples of intellectual snobs looking down on soft skills.