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?

Thank you so much, @Marchesman. Your info has helped me see through a lot of the Union, and media, hoo-ha surrounding the issue!

Where is the money for the doctors pay rises going to come from? By cuts elsewhere? Or by tax rises?

It all has to come from somewhere. And I don't see why the general public, most of whom who earn far less than doctors should be expected to stump up the cost, just so doctors can live in even more luxury. Maybe doctors can forgo their gold-plated pensions in order to have more money now?

They are on £36,000 for their first year only (in England - slightly less in Wales and Scotland). Their pay goes up far more quickly than any other public sector worker: Pay scales for resident doctors in England

I support them and just because you don't know anyone that does is irrelevant

Most of the people that support them are people with doctors in their family or social circles.

My husband earns more than them. He didn't study for 7 years and certainly doesn't hold someone's life in his hands every day.

You are welcome. I should add that unlike ARCP, Royal College examinations properly test performance and STs may get stuck around the mid point of training.

And that is because they know what the real lived experience of resident doctors is like.

People coming on here saying they have rooms for their breaks, they are paid overtime, they are paid for breaks etc... i am like where???????

People come on here and just rattle off stuff as if that is the life of every resident... okay let me not say 'every'... like that is the life of majority of the residents... okay, let me not say 'majority'... like that is the life of 50% of the residents.. okay let me not....
Not even 25%!
Where are people getting this tosh from?!

Totally support them. Our life in their hands. Why would you pay someone who had that responsibility the same as someone who makes a coffee in Starbucks.

Even as juniors they are paid more than Starbucks baristas. And over their career, a hell of a lot more.

If you are a doctor in the NHS but you aren't a consultant or a GP then you are basically still "in training" and you are a resident doctor (formerly known as junior doctors).

There used to be another type of doctor called staff grade but I think that has disappeared now. It was basically for those doctors who had completed their training but who, for various reasons, were not going to become consultants.

The problem with the term resident or junior doctor is that it covers a wide range of people, knowledge, skills and experiemce, going from newly entered graduates at the bottom of the range to doctors just below consultant level at the top. And the salary range reflects this.

When you hear figures bandied about like £18 per hour or £36 - 40,000 pa they are not representative of junior doctors as a whole. Those salaries only really apply to the first two years of foundation training. After that salaries progress relatively quickly and it is possible for a junior doctor to become a consultant after ten or so years of training.

See the sections headed Modernising Medical Careers and Pay and conditions here: Resident doctor (United Kingdom) - Wikipedia

The doctor in training payscales with effect from April 2024 are at Table 1 below. I think they were increased by 4% from April 2025.

The Complete Guide To NHS Pay For Doctors

Who needs to check what facts and what is your experience?

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I should clarify that although I was involved in workforce planning in the NHS I wasn't involved in medical staff planning so it's not my particular area of expertise.

But i think what i've told you is reasonably accurate.

(Medical workforce planning is a specialist area but I'm not sure it's particulalry well executed in the NHS)

My personal position is I just about support them, but much less this time round

but hilarious comments on this thread….

commenting on their wages and laziness etc….ok you go do that job then if the debt, wages and hours are so perfect. Problem solved

looking at their pay rise over 3 years and saying no one else had that? So completely ignoring the low wage rises since 2008

the usual comments re public v private sector. I have worked in both. I’ve seen minimal wage rises in the public sector when the private sector was booming with pay rises and bonuses. There are swings and roundabouts. Again if it’s so easy then move jobs yourself

Usual I know best views

Anyone who thinks that the most junior resident doctors are really badly paid should speak to some trainee and newly qualified barristers.

I’m married to a consultant with a resident doctor cousin in London (not striking).

DH thinks the BMA is off their rocker and so do most of his consultant colleagues.

We have a great lifestyle: the pay is fair and the pension is stonkingly generous. I worked many more hours than DH when he was a junior doc, as a trainee solicitor in corporate law - no paid overtime, WTD or unsociable hours for us. Never mind Starbucks - I paid my own cleaner double my gross hourly pay. It’s a training role at the end of the day.

The only people earning megabucks in city law are working 24/7 typically over a small portion of their career, because it’s unsustainable. The only person I know who took the cash for more than a decade recently had a stroke at his desk.

The BMA needs to grow up.

It was ever thus. DH was that pupil when we met. He had newspapers stuffed in his shoes, no family backing and I think would have given up if he hadn't met me when he did.

He left the house before 7 and got home after 9 for decades, often six days a week. If he'd been rude to clients, colleagues or solicitors he'd have been lucky to scrape a living. If he'd been moderately competent we might not have lived as well as a consultant's family.

Oh, and he was self employed: no sick pay, no holiday pay, no occupational pension, no innate job security.

The resident doctors are deluded.

If your husband is doing ANY private work during his NHS contracted hours, this is entirely reportable to the Trust and if he were my colleague I would not only report him, I would be obliged to, or I too would be complicit in his fraudulent behaviour.

You could be looking at suspension for this dishonesty, breach of job plan and contract etc
And GMC

Oh do pipe down, dear. Of course there is no bloody breach of his job plan of 12 PA’s. That still (most weeks, not all) allows him almost a full day off from the NHS in the working week to see PP’s. Typically one evening clinic and an occasional weekend. He’s got management responsibilities - as one would expect at £200k pa - and writes the bloody job plans for the other consultants, most of whom seem to do 10 PA’s or fewer. It would take some chutzpah to moonlight during his own…

I get that wealthy doctors with fucking amazing pensions doesn’t suit your narrative, and so my post makes you jolly cross, but alleging dishonesty and fraud straight off the bat seems a little de trop.

You inferred dishonesty from your post. You stated that he did private work during the working week. If he is doing this on a non- working day for the NHS, that's completely different. He can do what he likes then.

Perhaps you'd like to communicate clearly instead of trying to inferior that your husband and therefore others too fraudulently do private work during NHS contracted hours. Anyone reading your post would assume that.

If you stated that he has a non working day and does whatever then ( private medicine, surfing, who cares) it wouldn't have been quite so much fun though, would it?

And yes, and doctor doing private work during their NHS contracted hours would be reportable to employers and there would be huge consequences, and rightly so

It’s unfortunate that you do not know what “infer” means, when the only person doing any inference is you. I wrote - entirely clearly - that DH’s 12 PA’s allowed time M to F to carry out private work, from which you breathlessly inferred - rather laughably - that he was a dishonest fraudster who needed reporting to the BMA, which is quite the leap.

Perhaps a bit less time making placards about baristas’ pay and a bit more focus on reading comprehension might help?

I absolutely agree, so thank fuck he’s not doing it eh?

He's still paid £200k pa (and then some, thanks to BUPA and the like) though, which is a huge chunk of money, but I appreciate you don’t like them apples.

Because they lnoe the lived reality ogf their working conditions, and finances