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?

The police cannot strike either. Doctors striking during a severe flu outbreak is immoral and could lead to deaths. We know it is a bad strain, evidence from other countries.

That said the placements should go to local doctors. The Labour Party had ages to sort this out so if they haven’t, that is blood on their hands too.

Exactly. They work for us. We should not allow them to strike. They can go to work and fulfill their labour contract. The NHS exists to benefit the UK population.

You are obviously anti union which is fine but your opinion isn’t important.

They don't work for you. They are highly educated, intelligent people that work for the NHS.

At the moment around 50% of F2 doctors have no job. How long will it be before people choose not to be doctors?

I think it will go ahead.. maximum impact and all that, exactly why they're doing it in the middle of winter. I think it's really unethical though, they're supposed to be in a job that cares for people not leaves them to die.

They are more experienced in terms of years, but have no experiencing (necessarily) in the NHS. Plus standards in other countries differ, so they’re not always like for like.

Experience aside, it’s just a pragmatic issue. Why train all these med students just to have them be unable to progress to full consultants? Just to have them disappear abroad. If we’re happy just to import IMGs why bother having med schools at all? Let’s just shut them for a few years while we use up the supply of IMGs and then open them again when the supply starts to dwindle.

The doctors we import, even at very senior levels, aren’t consultants. They don’t have the qualifications to be consultants in the UK. If your end goal is fully qualified consultants, it’s much quicker and more effective to just let our own grads progress than to import experienced doctors from abroad

We are the ones using the NHS and quite often paying their salary.

And people in hospital won’t die during a junior doctors strike. What actually happens is you get the most experienced doctors in the hospital covering for the juniors. The hospitals and ED departments actually run a hundred times better during a junior doctor strike than when they are there. It’s things like out patients clinics that run more slowly

Not a fan of overinflated sense of self-importance vibe.

Sounds like my trump loving boomer dad

@Motheranddaughter I read an interview with a junior doctor about this. I can’t recall the exact details, but I think he said that oversees graduates apply through agencies who essentially use IT to submit applications for all UK jobs as they come up. So by the time UK graduates get home from work that day, the jobs advertised that morning are already closed due to the number of applicants they’ve already had.

I have a child that it spending a year in a Trust Grade job rather than progressing to higher specialty training due to ridiculous competition ratios in 2025.

What a condescending arrogant comment those 1000s of doctors who work in Trust grade jobs, teach, train and deliver superb care to hundred of patients.

Every job in the NHS is a training job as one never stops learning. Maybe if your child thinks these jobs are unworthy of their talents this might be why they did not progress

It isn’t a severe flu out break, it’s earlier than usual but well with the normal range of numbers over the last few decades. I am fed up the goverment narrative that the flu numbers couldn’t have been easily predicted.

Yes, I was quite shocked when I saw the graph thing, I expected it to be really high but it looked similar to past years just a bit earlier

From my point of view as a consultant anaesthetist, hospital management insisting on Buisness as Usual and full theatre lists in a hospital which is already full, rising flu cases and imminent strikes from resident doctors and biomedical scientists feels far more dangerous than the strikes themselves.

..and you don't think there are already a higher than normal amount of deaths owing to the severe overcrowding in our hospitals? The state of the NHS is immoral and IS leading to deaths despite whether the doctors strike or not. I really wish a news reporter or Mr Streeting would actually come and spend a day with my son.

The flu epidemic is down to governmental decisions to not free flu vaccinate those who, in previous years, qualified and in most schools parents not responding to the school request for permission to nasal spray their children. Funnily enough the year most of the population were given a free flu jab there were hardly any cases! I work in a school and the take up was extremely poor and now we have lots of very poorly children.

The outbreak is earlier than expected but the government are using it as a narrative to emotionally blackmail the doctors and lead the public from actually querying the Dept of Health on their lack of pre-emptive actions which would have been cheaper than the amount of inpatients right now.

Streeting and co have developed a narrative to get the public to hate the resident doctors. It seems to be working. He did the same re the abolition of NHSE which is going so badly it's close to unbelievable. And will cost millions, not save money. I don't trust a word Streeting says, he has his eye on the top job and unfortunately may actually get it.

Ironically when my DH was in hospital during the last resident doctors' strike he got to see his specialist consultant for the first time in years during a ward round 🤣

Trust grade jobs are not training jobs. I doubt there are 1,000s of them in this economic climate. They are service provision only. Of course doctors will learn while doing Trust Grade jobs but they are not on a path to becoming a consultant.

The ridiculous competition ratios mean my DCs surgical training has been interrupted so previous 2 years of surgical training is wasted.

At the moment around 50% of F2 doctors have no job. How long will it be before people choose not to be doctors - that is just not true, no one including the BMA ahve proven that.

Why do some people spout utter rubbish. Nothing justifies depriving people of health care they have contributed to with their taxes.

My lay understanding is if hospitals are stretched to a situation were major incidents are being declared in the summer due to - lack of capacity of bed, staff and issues of moving well people to more appropriate places, then there is no way they will safely get through the usual winter bugs.

Thank you

In theory yes but that is unlikely to end well.

Not rubbish. It may be a good idea to do some background reading as your posts show a complete lack of understanding of the issues.

Doctors come out with 100k of debt after 5 years at medical school. Who would do that with only a 50% chance of getting a job at the end of the process? These are highly intelligent people.

Labour are running the NHS hot like previous governments. Not enough staff or beds.

Wes Streeting could have sorted out this dispute in the summer but he stropped out of negotiations, did nothing and has now left it far too late. He could have been round the table weeks ago, so this latest crisis is all on him. BTW doctors are also taxpayers, they don't just work for you. They have been treated really badly by successive governments and the narrative now is that they are greedy and it's all their fault. Not surprised they have had enough.