To think the junior / resident doctors are greedy, selfish, entitled & lazy?

[SpottyAlpaca]

So the resident doctors are out on strike. Yet again. Patients are being inconvenienced & treatments delayed. Yet again.

They have received a pay rise of 28.9% over that last 3 years, which is by far the highest increase of any group in the public sector. Very few people in the private sector, who ultimately pay the doctors’ salaries, have received anything like as much. Very few of their patients will ever earn as much as a resident doctor. Yet still it’s not enough and they are demanding even more.

Doctors do an important job and deserve to be paid properly for it. But the BMA’s current approach is completely unreasonable and deluded. They talk about “pay restoration’ to 2008 levels but that’s completely unrealistic. The country is poorer now & simply can’t afford it. AIBU to think they should get back to work?

They obviously aren’t lazy. They work FT, nights, on call and endless exams on top of it all.
They are possibly being a bit greedy though.

I’m just gobsmacked by the levels of entitlement in Britain now @HugoElephant. And stupidity. No one seems to grasp that Britain is not a society now, not a team enterprise. It is literally about money and power. Thats the consequence of undermining the whole concept of public sector, of a res publica, and replacing everything with a - globalised no less - market economy. What does anybody owe anything or anyone?

Least of all the highly qualified and incredibly hardworking youngsters, best of the bunch in schools, who have been screwed over on every front. Life was bad enough for my generation. Britain is now collapsing. You were warned.

I qualified in 2008 and the expectation was that you stayed until all your work was done so we worked a lot of unpaid hours over and above the 56 we were paid for. These days junior doctors mostly finish on time, get protected teaching time etc.

That said, they graduate with a hell of a lot more debt than we did and the job situation is not great right now.

I don’t support striking on pay again - yes, the pay is lower at the start but the majority of your career is spent on a much higher salary than most people will earn plus a very good pension.

However I absolutely support them striking for better job security, more control over working location, more advanced notice of rotas and being able to book annual leave further in advance, less replacement of medical roles with non-medics, writing off student loans after a fixed period of NHS service, reducing exam fees etc.

It’s a shame the BMA have stuck to the pay as being the main grievance because I think there are so many other things they could push for that would significantly improve the junior doctor years, that would get more public support and would be harder for the government to refuse.

It’s a shame the BMA have stuck to the pay as being the main grievance because I think there are so many other things they could push for that would significantly improve the junior doctor years, that would get more public support and would be harder for the government to refuse.

Absolutely, it's a tactical error and has lost them huge public support.

Your point on annual leave is a good one. In the first two years they rotate around six different departments which may be spread over several hospitals, not of their choosing. They're not allowed to apply for leave in advance of each rotation, so can't apply for leave more than 3 months ahead, so holidays can't be booked in line with partners. It's only a little thing but all adds towards perception of poor conditions.

I can absolutely see why trusts want fewer doctors - they keep going on strike. We have not collapsed the NHS by using other people to step in. We, the public, need to ensure value for money and having the NHs working for us! The strikes have cost £3 billion. This matters! Look at what others get paid. Nurses could have done with this!

I support them.

The hours in management consultancy and the high paying ends of pharma are easily competitive with medicine (but without the paid overtime). There are plenty of studies on big consulting (which is where the money is) showing that in the early years you could earn more in McDonalds if you pro-rata’d the actual hours.
You can also kiss goodbye to the gold plated pension scheme (which I note the BMA declined to use to improve pay in the early years - too valuable) and many of the other public sector benefits. You would also join a competitive appraisal process (ie however good everyone is the bottom rated X% are transitioned out each year - nobody gets to sit on their laurels when the move up the ladder). Then of course there are the wholesale redundancies every time there is a downturn (at least five in the last 20 years).

I hear this a lot from the public sector “I could get double in the private sector”, I note how few actually make the move and of those who do - many return to the public sector within a few years.

Medicine is a challenging and hard working profession for most and as such is accorded high social status and deserves to be well rewarded. There is no shortage of people wanting to benefit from medical school. However all professions demand long hours and continuing qualifications/training to progress to the big salaries, most people never make it to those big salaries in the longer term - this is not something unusual or special to medicine.

I would say the BMA are deluded but their leadership know exactly what they are doing - they are disproportionately political nepo babies serving their own interests and demonstrably unable to understand data.

I know doctors who have left the BMA in sheer frustration with the hackery rather than negotiating on areas such as loan costs and the challenges in job mobility in the early years, both of which would still retain public sympathy whilst improving conditions for junior doctors.

Nurses are paid plenty.

Newly qualified Band 5 nurses starting at £31,049–£33,488 in 2025/26, depending on experience. Experienced nurses (Band 6-7) generally earn £38,000–£53,000+, while senior roles (Band 8+) can exceed £77,000

I’m getting a little tired of NHS workers being portrayed as harder working and less paid than everybody else. They’re not.

I don’t agree with how uk trained doctors and nurses are punted out by lesser trained foreign workers though. Uk gold standard trained staff at all levels should always be the priority

Job security is so rarely mentioned in relation to doctors. That and surviving constant rudeness to patients, poor communication and the lack of career impact relating to huge mistakes.

I know! The mental health sector level of care and what they get away with is frankly appalling.

So why does no one want to do it any more? The thrill of keeping 86 yr olds alive for another 2 years while being punched and bitten by them, or even the 20 year old druggies who also punch and bite and hurl verbal abuse constantly? Running around for 12 hrs solid after these people who talk to you like shit, talking about lazy idle youngsters constantly, while earning less than you can get in supermarkets and rather less than that generation got paid in real terms? None of which pays enough to earn you a house of your own and the right to put up pictures even?

Cant think why it’s so hard to recruit.

@C8H10N4O2These striking doctors would get nowhere in the private sector. They have no idea how hard others work or what talents they have. I agree, private sector is far more competitive to get into and remain in. Big salaries are not offered to everyone - you compete very hard to get up the ladder. There’s significantly more competition. There are good working conditions in the main but long hours are normal snd those doctors pensions are not matched. The tax payer puts 25% into doctors pensions and many retire before 60. Private sector doesn’t do this. If it was that easy, the nhs would have no doctors. It’s not easy and many doctors are not going to cut it in the big world outside the NHS and earn double.

It’s like looking at the big law firms. Great training and salaries if you are retained, but 25% are not. Doctors have far more certainty of employment.

We don't have the money to pay public sector workers properly but do have the money to subsidise energy giants, retail conglomerates and millionaire pensioners.

Last year the oil and gas industry alone received £17.5bn worth of subsidies, enough to give every single resident doctor AND every single nurse in the NHS £20k

But then the NHS doesn't tend to provide quite as lucrative employment opportunities to our illustrious politicians. So... priorities I guess 🤷‍♀️

What an odd thing to say. You sound angry with your own life so projecting onto an over worked underpaid group of people

Nurses and doctors are paid properly!

Well going by the bun fight for uni places for doctors and nurses that clearly isn’t true. The NHS isn’t providing enough jobs after.

Continuously upping good salaries above and beyond everybody else for fewer staff is not the way to go.

The other thing that pisses me off is NHS trained consultants doing just a few days a week in the NHS thus making wait lists longer and leaving the path free for exorbitant private work. It’s a racket that needs to be curtailed.

I fully agree with you 100%.

There have been at least 15 strikes since March 2023!

I agree they should be paid properly and are doing a very hard and important job, but it's like they're saying ''we are the only ones who have degrees/PhDs and work hard and put ourselves at risk, so we want more''

Their egos and never-ending whining demands are ridiculous and boring, and if they don't like the wages and hours, they should leave and find jobs more to their liking!

Full-time hospital porters and cleaners earn an average of £25,000-£27,000 per year, which is roughly £12.50 an hour. And they work their arses off for it. I used to work as a cleaner in non-medical places for about £8.00 per hour, full-time. Multiple shifts, day and night, but not once did I ever strike; I just got on with it.

Full-time hospital doctors, depending on seniority etc., can earn over £145,000 a year and they STILL want MORE!

They should try scrubbing toilets for a living on £8.00 an hour and see how they cope on that!

Before their morning break (which they probably wont get), these people have had to make more life impacting decisions under pressure than most of us will have to make in a lifetime. Yes, they deserve at least fair pay.

I think that quoting % are misleading. I believe the figures are more like a current £18 per hour and the ask is to be moved to £23 per hour. This seems fair for the level of responsibility and training/expertise required. It’s an emotive subject however.

A Foundation Year 1 (F1) doctors earn a basic salary of £36,616, while Foundation Year 2 (F2) doctors earn £42,008. For an F1 that’s just over £17 an hour and after 5 years at medical school. They may well leave as you suggest but to get medical roles in other countries.
The £100k+ salaries are consultants who are not a part of this strike action.

Their requests aren't unreasonable and they are certainly not lazy.

However I'm not sure that the strike is a good idea- there is a real sense in the country that everything is broken, no services are adequate, almost nobody is fairly paid. For junior doctors to deliberately make things worse for the rest of us in order to better their own position is inevitably going to harm how lots of the public see them. That's not to say that their requests are wrong nor even that striking is wrong, but it is tone deaf.

They remind me a bit of the Labour backbenchers refusing to countenance any reduction in benefits- a failure to update their position in the face of the current economic situation, which will almost certainly mean that the outcome is worse in the long run. We are a poor country now, still trying to act like a rich one.

Oh the consultants are planning to strike for even more later in the year. All were given a pay rise this month and junior doctors were offered a good deal.

Like people in whom the British taxpayer have invested a minimum of £200,000 EACH to educate and train them. The student medics don’t pay that, their loan repayments don’t even begin to slightly touch the sides! Tying in is a fair enough deal. It would help focus on those with a true vocation.

The NHS provides a guaranteed job pretty much, the training and experience for early skill development is unparalleled and earning opportunities extraordinarily good, as is career development.

Of those other nine non-selected med school candidates, how many do we think would easily find it in their interests to do the job? They would all swap places with these strikers. And be better doctors, who place patients first.

I hope everyone with loved ones needing care during this strike period are ok, safe and unharmed, and get the care they need ❤️

Over 50% of those who will finish their F2 this summer, won’t have a role to go into for their speciality training due to poor NHS workforce planning. They will be unemployed as doctors in the UK. At that stage their average student debt is £70k.