Resident doctors synicsl strike again

[uneffingbelievable]

The resident doctors have once again announced a 6 day strike to co incide with a bank holiday weekend.

Whilst I support fair pay and working conditions I have lost all sympathy with them. This is not poverty when you are being paid as a whole package 40-95000 gross on a 44 hr week depending on your seniority.

The arguments about lack of jobs did not stack up with more jobs going to home graduates than IMGS despite the hysteria and a huge number of home graduates not even bothering to apply.

They are coming across as tone deaf and entitled or am I missing something.

Hilarious to state a lawyer who doesn't study law has to study it for a couple of years!!
Ummm otherwise they are not a lawyer.

Please educate yourself on what a doctor's training looks like to become a specialist. Realise it's massively competent each step of the way.

Not comparable to these other careers, by many years.

Massively competitive at each step

Engineering, law and architecture sound like a walk in the park, frankly.

And NHS pension is career average, the same as every other NHS employee.

Sorry, did someone appoint you to run this thread?

You do know it's meant to be a discussion?

They can't reduce their hours more, they already get far less training than doctors used to because they work shorter hours. They, and all their apologists, forget that junior doctors are still training. The most junior of them aren't even allowed to work unsupervised.

A person who wishes to qualify as a solicitor but did a non law degree then has 2 years of law school (after 3 years of uni) plus two years of training before they qualify.

Unfortunately you lost me at "educate yourself...". Far too BLM lingo for any subsequent point to be taken seriously.

Just underlines my point about it taking so little time to become a solicitor.

If you have a vocation you wouldn't be striking if it endangers lives. So if you do strike you don't have a vocation (just in my opinion of course).

If you don't have a vocation and you complain about the wage structure of the career you knew about and still chose, then you're probably in it for the money.

If you want more than the high pay and unbelievable benefits a doctor has once they are senior then you chose the wrong career. Do a career where you get more cash, sooner. Like Goldman Sachs. Although unfortunately if you try striking with them to get more dosh you can't use people's lives as a threat.

Is it a competition? Doctors seem to think they have it worse than everyone else whereas most people can see they do pretty well.

If we have to compare a lawyer, 7 years is a long time to be in a higher education. And then when you qualify you have to start from scratch to specialise which can take many years and many long hours. And yet lawyers dont get the fat pension and final salary scheme underwritten by taxpayers. Neither they can't use people's lives to extort more pay out of the government.

I think if doctors strike this time they are greedy.

You really are being very unpleasant about a cohort of very bright and hard working people.

There are an awful lot of bright hardworking people in this country who aren't doctors and who will have to cough up more tax to pay the wage rise of already very well paid people.

They don't save lives or have the amount of responsibility that doctors and paramedics
etc have.

They are asking for pay restoration not rise.

1 ladybird that was in euros so yes - less than than the 95K an ST6 can be on!

It is hard work but everyone has known that for the past 40 yrs.
Pay restoration is not going to happen as they do not deserve it anymore than nurses physios, security staff etc deserve it

There are jobs to progress into but you do ahve to actually apply for them and not assume you will not get one because the gossip mongers are sayingthe international competition is going to take them all. 59% of training posts went to uk graduates.

BeaTwix are you seriously a doctor - changing jobs every 3 months, you accept a job on a rotation which may make you move hospitals every 6 months within a small area a lot stay in posts for a year. Please stop exaggerrating the working conditions they are not as bad as they were - things have improved and can improve further but pay is not bad and the hours are not bad either.

They knew exactly what they were signing up for when the started at medical school. Knew the situation, the input, the hours, the pay scales. They knew. It's hard graft at first, but it's short term pain for very, very good long term gain.

The two things arent connected. You dont get paid extra just because your job involves health. You should get paid well, which they are.

Ive seen what doctors get re pensions and other benefits. They are greedy to demand more. And their wage and benefits are underwritten by taxpayers and their jobs arent vulnerable to AI

The reduction in medics salaries and job availability is nothing short of ridiculous, especially bearing in mind you are looking at the very top performing kids.
My DH is a medic, at 31 we lived in a house ( 3 beds, garden, 2 garages) thatcost the equivalent of 1 x his annual salary. He worked hard sure, but applied for specific jobs in the region he wanted. As a consultant we put four kids through private school on his salary without a giant private practice ( I’m a teacher so not putting loads into the family pot). As a child from a FSM family he went through university entirely free, he even got three return train tickets a year home paid for.
My DS2, aged 31 now, is also a medic. He lives at home, commutes an hour each way and his girlfriend is 90 mins away in the opposite direction. A similar house to ours at that stage would cost probably 4-5x his annual salary. Each job is basically a lottery, he can get sent anywhere in the UK. His student debt is nearly 100k. He is about to work 7 days in a row, starting with 2 x 13 h shifts on Saturday and Sunday. There is no way he will be able to fund 4 kids through private school, 1 would be a challenge. His 2 younger brothers, with much poorer A level results earn considerably more than him.
These young doctors have been sold an absolute lie.

The country’s leading scientists would love to be included in this conversation.

Are you a doctor? Very much doubt it as doctors rarely display such ignorance.

They really didn't. Regardless of how much work experience and research they do no 17 year old has an objective understanding of what it's like to be a junior doctor, working shifts, making decisions, performing procedures and covering a dozen plus wards on a night shift as an extremely junior doctor in immediate life threatening situations with minimal support. The most junior doctor today started uni pre pandemic, the majority of junior doctors started uni 8-12 years ago some might have started in 2011 things were very different then.

The entire British workforce would like pay restoration. The rest of us can’t implicitly hold people’s lives hostage.

They are the foot soldiers of the NHS and our future medical and surgical etc consultants. A word to the (not so) wise. These are the ones whose expertise saves lives and looks after ill people.

Defo sounds like blackmail. Not a good look.

I agree all nhs staff deserve it too. That’s where my original comment comes in though from my first post.

Medicine/ Drs are an international commodity. Supply and demand. We are not paying experienced drs anywhere near as much as the rest of the western world medical field pay. So internationally we will get the scraps. As we would in any field paying less the than going odds. So there in lies the reason why we are short staffed and unable to lure the best here and retain people. Also why many home grown leave. It’s only going to get a whole lot worse over the next decade as our economy continues to nosedive.

I think you’re pulling untrue figures out. Very very few resident doctors get £90K.

I’m well aware of currency exchange thank you 😆 The € and $ examples you gave are comparably to NHS resident dr salaries on average. When converted to £.

The doctors getting paid £90+K PA as residents drs are ST8 surgeons for example. 10 years post med school. Qualified surgeons. A year or so away from consultants jobs, working 55+ hours a week. Nights, weekends to get the uplifts. Only surgeon in the hospital for trauma calls at night. Possibly still consultants exams to sit but otherwise very competent drs operating by themselves - but in our system still called resident (previously junior) drs.

In many of the other systems you reference they have a different structure. The surgeons who have passed all their surgical exams, but are not yet consultants, would be paid as registrars/ surgeons not very junior house grade. As per the figures you are quoting.

No sympathy from me! They doing this right after a bank holiday. They time their strikes well. They get paid enough when they’re qualified. Selfish fuckwits!

Medical schools admit applicants from the top 25% of the population - entrants to medicine ceased to be "top performing" a long time ago. After they graduate, they are guaranteed employment on salaries that surpass every other degree. They are also much better paid, factoring in inflation and hours worked, than their counterparts prior to the introduction of the EWTD.

The "very top performing kids" generally don't go into medicine because they are able to compete in the real world, where there are often a couple of hundred applicants for each job, and job security is non-existent.

My children were persuaded not to do medicine and have bought houses worth four and five times as much as the house that I owned as a medical registrar at the same age - but that house would still easily be affordable on the salary of a single ST1, working half the hours that I did.

Also your facts are not correct/ misleading.

It’s not true that all US ‘Junior’ staff get paid less at all. The very new ones don’t get much first couple of years as they’re not all that useful until they get more experience! Same in UK when F1 or F2. Low resident dr salary. We class very experienced drs in UK as still junior (until it was rebadged resident for that precise reason- it was misleading to members of the public).

Quick Google of senior resident drs in USA:

As of Mar 6, 2026, the average annual pay for a Senior Resident Medical Officer in the United States is $126,559 a year. That’s £95K in British pounds for you.

That’s 4-7 years post med school. £90k you’re referring to in UK is an ST8 surgeon with 10-11 years experience post med school.

US they can the earn £500k PA with lower taxes to pay after this period. UK £110-£120PA and lose half to tax.

So yes globally very different outlook/ reality.

I’m not saying NHS drs should get 5 times what they do as we do not have an American system. However, we should be similar to other Western European countries.