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.

I’d love some of you to work 3 back to back 12 hour night shifts as an a&e doctor in a deprived northern town as my SiL-to-be is this weekend, literally making life and death decisions, often without a break, earn £42k a year and then tell me that doctors are overpaid whiners.

So many people who want to pull up the ladder and watch the rest of society race to the bottom.

All grateful for a doctor when you need one though eh?

The last GMC workforce report that looked at progress after FY2 was 2024, and the most recent data then showed that 56% of F2 doctors did not apply to core or specialty training when they finished F2 training.

Of those who did apply, 92% received an offer.

Your SIL presumably chose to be a doctor and knew about the pay. When she gets on a bit in her career her pay, pension and benefits will be exceptional. A lot better than most get on here, particularlyin the private sector. And underwritten by the taxpayer which is a great advantage in these times.

This is absolute bollocks, did you even read my post. My medic DS, with much better A levels than his 2 younger brothers ( and more years of working experience) earns much less than them on their graduate salaries.
Loads and loads of different jobs pay their graduates much more than the first few years of junior medic life.
And as a teacher medicine remains the aspiration of many of our highest performers at A level, despite me suggesting other better paid, fewer working hours careers to them.

I agree. If I understand correctly we pay to train Drs then that expertise is utilised in other countries so we have to pay to train more Drs to fulfil our needs and thus the money to pay better salaries to those who do stay isn't always there, but I may have an over simplified view and lack of understanding of the situation and I put my hands up to that

Having said that you can't blame them for seeking better pay and recognition elsewhere

And how long, on average, was that, @PurpleFairyLights ?

It isn't really of any consequence that 6000 of them aren't progressing in
their training, not everyone with a medical degree will progress in the profession now there are so many of them. Streeting, who you seem to rate, has expressly said that there will be no expansion in consultant numbers. So, the actual replacement number at the top of the pyramid, that is GP 's and consultants retiring or leaving is around 2000 a year. There are multiple times that number of graduates every year, ergo they categorically will not all progress.

Medicine has become like law, where not every graduate with a law degree will get a training contract, or like acting where not everyone with a drama degree will end up at the National Theatre. It just seems to be taking an inordinately long time for medicine graduates and their families to grasp this concept. Striking for more money will actually exacerbate the problem.

I put it in another post

The points that I made are evidence-based, as opposed to your ludicrous anecdotes.

I hope you don't teach a STEM subject.

What an unpleasant comments. It matters to the young doctors that worked so hard to get their degrees then found out they were competing with the rest of the world for a training place

Just like law graduates working so hard for their degrees. Have you ever heard them complaining? They are realists.

Exactly. And law school graduates will have spent a fortune and have a high chance of not getting a training contract. At least doctors won't have to contend with AI replacing their jobs either.

Not much of a competition when 92% of them are successful.

@Pineneedlesincarpet Add in that it’s not just law grads who become lawyers either! Talented non law grads are in the mix too. Doctors are a closed shop!

Why does law always pop up on threads about doctors ?
Its amazing how intelligent people can buy Wes' propaganda. But I assume people don't want to see a doctor when they are ill.

Meanwhile doctors are working hard saving lives at 2am. Just like lawyers. Oh wait ....

A law degree is useful for many careers.

They do not have only one source of employment - the NHS.

They are also paid very well and can move on if want pay rises.

You are comparing apples and oranges.

Well they patently aren't going to be working hard saving lives at 2 a.m. That's rather the problem, they are going to be shouting on hospital steps in fancy dress trying to hold the country to ransom.

Your stats are not correct for the 2025 cohort when the explosion of IMG applications made UKGs unemployed.

Purple - why can you not see that any job in medicine develops you as a doctor. You seem to put so much on a "training" job - one of the best doctors I know never had a "training" job but made it as a consultant. His resilience and fortitude on doing it his own way ahs meant he has experienced medicine outside the scope of his chosen speciality and as a consequence has a greater understanding of so much more in healthcare.

He is firly against the strikes and run through training as he does not think it builds resilience if you training is delivered on a plate for you!

The closed shop is called a medical degree

Pathetic response I'm afraid. This is the whole problem. Doctors deal with lives. This is why I don't believe any doctor that strikes and endangers lives has a true vocation. Sorry. They should try law school instead and specialise in medical negligence or something if they have some interest in medicine.

People mention lawyers when doctors complain because they are another example of a profession where people spend years a lot of money to train (without guarantee of a job needed to qualify) and work long hours. Its not a "who is better" competition.

In 2025 our UK trained doctors (at a cost of 4 billion a year) had a serious risk of unemployment after F2 as they were in competition with 20,800 international medical graduates to gain a training place.

The Resident doctors do not leave the UK for more money they leave to enable them to continue working as a doctor.

That is not true. The days of that being the case went when specialty training was introduced.

Trainees take priority with learning opportunities as the deanery pay for that.

Jobs are just service provision mostly.

Those are the latest published figures for total applications and offers, against a background of a rising proportion of F2s not applying for training posts. Foreign graduates are largely getting these posts because UK graduates don't apply.

Sorry - that is just not true. Trust grade doctors get a GWS exactly the same as the "training" doctors do on the smae rota. They all rotate through the clinics operating, ward rounds etc. all get time off, all get an AES, CS all get access to study leave and a budget for that.
What is different.
Do you seriously think a senior doctor does not teach the trust grade as much as the training grade - that is utter bollocks and if you are truly a doctor as you infer then what speciality does that -because I have never seen that.

Oh and deanery funding does not cover the cost of the training grades salary