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?

i don’t support the doctors strike and think their pay claim is unrealistic but don’t think th e government should have taken the training plan off the table. That doesn’t just benefit individual doctors but is a step toward making the currently wasteful and dysfunctional system more workable.

They have over twice the student debt (£80,000) after studying for 7 years. "Junior doctors" are up to 10 years called. Every other country pays them more. Do you think we shouldn't pay people more to save our lives and our families lives? How much would you pay on the spot to save a loved one from a heart attack/stroke/embolism? We should be paying them double!!!! £40,000 a year is NOT enough! The average pay for a tube driver is £71,000.

Your DH sounds like a lot of the consultants I know, who all manage to combine working "more than full time equivalent" nhs with a chunk of extremely lucrative private, all within working hours that would be considered standard for a comparably paid lawyer, accountant or IT professional

I sympathise with the training roles situation. NHS training roles should not be being advertised to international doctors until locally trained residents have been offered roles.

But its normal in many professional careers to earn quite crap pay in the first decade because the reward later on his high pay. Doctors have the highest average pay of all occupations.

Most salaries have not kept pace with inflation. The issue re student loan is separate and the answer isn't a higher uplift on wages, as not all doctors even have student loans! The answer is to reduce the inflation applied to student loans to cap it at the lowest public sector pay increases.

The PA will be lucky to get 2% pa if she remains a PA, whereas doctors fly up the pay scale while they are training. No uplifts for unsociable hours either: PA’s in law firms often work the same shitty hours as the solicitors.

Doctors know this: the nonsense they peddle about baristas and the like is fundamentally disingenuous. It relies on the credulity of people who are generally less intelligent than them.

pay is often the one thing that is highlighted for a strike but there are less published asks to such as their rotas. (Needing them more than just 4 weeks in advance)
in my opinion I see how EVERYONE works hard (I am in the profession care sector) a different kind of hard compared to those in public service roles. I don’t use the NHS myself but I do hope it gets resolved as I know people are waiting ages for general appointments and more importantly specialist treatment

What a very good, well informed and generally excellent post. Thank you.

i admire doctors. I wouldn’t - couldn’t - do what they do.

But doctors’ pay, pension and career progression is very good as a package. And the pay calculations the BMA makes are fanciful.

I fear this is yet another once-valued profession that, like teaching, is leading itself into contempt for being seen as more interested in political activism than doing its much appreciated and revered job.

The BMA did not put the vote to its members. Resident doctors are certainly not lazy. Very long hours, snatched meal breaks, years of post grad study, and exams for which tbey pay, no guaranteed specialist training posts

Being a Dr takes years of study, student debt, an inability to work while studying due to placements.

They then do long hours and have more expectations and patients for comparably less money. Significantly less.

I feel the same about my job, but some jobs are more important than others. Id worry more not about medicine being a less attractive career or further privatisation. We may pay for their pay rises, but its better than the American situation.

You forgot arrogant and undereducated.

I fully support them. How can we say £35k / £18 per hour is a fair salary when we pay happily circa £40-£60 an hour for a tradesman.

The starting salary for a teacher in Scotland is very similar to a Junior Doctor, and teachers, despite having a very important job, have a lot less responsibility, work less hours and have more annual leave. In addition some Advanced Nurse Practitioners, Physicians Associates and nurses can earn more than the junior doctors ( and nurses have no student debt as they receive a bursary in Scotland). And to add insult to injury there is then a shortage of speciality training places after their foundation years. It’s no wonder they’re all jumping ship to Australia where they’re valued and have much better working conditions. If the NHS doesn’t sit up and listen and pay them a decent starting salary commensurate with the responsibility of the job it’s only going to get a lot worse.

It's not a racket. It's the marginal tax bracket effect, and the childcare hours.
This puts the brakes on the amount of NHS hours, as only an idiot would work more to get less.

Consultants are more often than not beyond childcare years.

Enjoy tons of unnecessary investigations and exponential waiting lists as everyone is scanned and tested for everything, preventing those who need X accessing it.

That's the future of the NHS when it has ANPs/ ASPs/whatever new acronym the NHS has made made up delivering 'healthcare'.

Whatever it is, it isn't medicine.

This!
I find it such a pathetic attempt to patronise public sector workers when people come out with “and my taxes pay your wages” about anything and anyone who doesn’t do what they want or has their shared view/opinion.
Do people understand how the economy works? It’s not one-sided with the public sector ‘taking’ and the private sector ‘giving’.
If a doctor goes into a cafe (if they have half a chance) they will be paying their already tax-deducted income to buy a sandwich and coffee, which goes towards the cafe owner and staff wages, and sustaining that business. The cafe owner will have to pay their suppliers, and so on. Likewise if the doctor put petrol in their car to drive to work, they will be ‘paying’ the wages of those all those in that supply chain…

All that said, I think this strike is unnecessary and reflects poorly on the BMA. Resident doctors absolutely deserve a decent start salary and progression. But they’ve had a substantial increase (rightly so) in recent years, and the country (and world) are in a very challenged position mostly due to the orange warmonger, so we need to cut our cloth accordingly in terms of appropriate and fair pay awards. It’s not feasible or reasonable to keep referring back to 2008 pay freezes as something we need to up pay for to recognise something that wasn’t paid almost 20 years ago - those were sh!t times globally too, just for different reasons.

No one’s public sector pay has kept up and I do not know why the doctors are more special than the other jobs/roles. You do not hear from the nurses. I work for the CS and remember the years of a 1% pay rise 🫣

I hate to say it but the NHS is the biggest money pit this country has and yet the services only get worse year by year. I’ve had the misfortune via my son to see the war zone that is A&E several times and the poor excuse for care. Patients left in agony and neglected whilst staff chat and laugh. You never see anyone rushing about and try and get someone from any outpatient department on a Friday - they all work part-time. We have a third world health system and it’s time we admitted it.

That’s except the Resident Doctors. They are the backbone of NHS medical expertise and are exploited by their colleagues. Senior Consultants and Surgeons are all working privately 3 days a week which is the real reason waiting lists are so high, and the poor resident doctors are the ones left to deal with patients having no choice but to turn up to A&E to wait 10 hours plus and if they’re really poorly on a trolley in a corridor.

Meanwhile hospital managers earn upwards of £100k plus. The entire system needs a root and branch restructure but of course that won’t happen. We’ll just get more and more apologies and enquiries that produce recommendations which are never acted upon and no accountability or consequences.

I have private medical insurance because I don’t trust the NHS to be there for me when I need it. But I can’t get private A&E - if I could I would, not least for my terminally ill
son.

Wes Streeting needs to get on with his reforms asap. A good start would be to get rid of doctors tuition fees in return for a 10 year employment contract in the NHS because believe it or not there are too many applicants for each job - bonkers.

Rant over (sorry) 😞

I’ve been looking at the pay information previous posters have provided. Can anyone tell me, after FY1 & FY2, how do the resident doctors progress up the pay scales, CT1 to CY2 for instance? Is it automatic each year? Or is it performance based? Or something else?

Many consultants I know are in the thick of childcare years.

Me, I support them. They want a proper salary. Fair enough.

Only people who have not worked with NHS resident doctors would call then lazy.

Only people who aren't resident doctors, were never resident doctors, have no family or friends as resident doctors would call them greedy, selfish and entitled.

People are always so happy to comment with 'facts' and run down resident doctors when in fact they do not know it all.

I fully support them.

no guaranteed specialist training posts - why should they be guaranteed a training post. Competition is good and drives innovation and improved care, new discoveries etc

This is not a good way to evolve the development of specialists.

There is a lot of rubbish being spouted on here which just is not true and I do nto agree with the strikes

Amazing these idiots airily saying “they knew what the pay was like when they started training! Why did they go into the profession?” As if doctors are some kind of frippery, a luxury that society doesn’t need. Just mind bogglingly ignorant.

This is pie in the sky though. How are people supposed to be carers for their parents when they need to work and be earning themselves? We just don’t live like that anymore. And more and more people are living longer but not necessarily healthily.

"It would help focus on those with a true vocation."

This is quite a toxic thing to say/think. A true vocation doesn't mean being willing to be paid peanuts, even during training.

"no guaranteed specialist training posts - why should they be guaranteed a training post."

because they need them??