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?

@Newbutoldfatherok. But we need to wean ourselves off the NHS and appreciate there’s better models. We absolutely need to get better productivity which is impossible with a strike happy workforce letting us all down.

They do spend a lot more but was rated as best by the WHO

Nobody has said on this thread that doctors aren't worth what they are being paid.

Why do discussions about how public services are paid for always descend to this kind of argument?

🤣🤣🤣

Still trying to make sense of @Imdunfer comment

I'm afraid that if you were to rely on only an F1 in any of these situations you would (literally) be dead too, and it is the salary specifically of these doctors that the BMA has used to justify the strike. Except for the most straightforward tasks they require close supervision - unlike, say, a band 5 staff nurse who regularly makes life and death decisions without more senior assistance.

A band 5 staff nurse is paid £29000-36000 pa.; F1s and F2s earn on average £50,000 pa.

It is obscene that the BMA are asking for more money. Even the majority of doctors do not agree with this behaviour.

"I would imagine you need a good standard of German or French to practice medicine in Germany or France. "

So? They're intelligent people, they can reach that level if they want to. A doctor friend of mine did some of his training in Belgium and even moved from the French to the Dutch side, learning to work in both languages.
Consultant wage wasn't the important thing while he was doing his training. The terrible hours in the UK were what made him move, but this was years ago.

@GoieWe need to look at the whole tax and work situation in France to appreciate how they spend more but it’s not a NHS there. I suspect it’s a more productive system too.

As for doctors learning MFLs! They mostly gave them up at 16. Some at 14. We don’t care about MFLs here and of course they cannot work anywhere other than English speaking countries. The vast majority anyway. Others could work in the country of their extended families no doubt but that’s often not a better job.

Pay my own wages by your logic then, like other doctors.
Likely pay a heck of a lot more tax than you too.

Speaking from personal experience of living and working abroad, I think you overestimate the difficulty in gaining fluency in foreign languages.

Not quite re F1 abd F2 pay
https://www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pay/resident-doctors-pay-scales/pay-scales-for-resident-doctors-in-england

Also band 5 staff nurses refer life/death decisions to doctors if they are the most senior nurses on duty

Agreed.
Have NEVER heard of band 5, or indeed 6/7 nurses making life/ death decisions and all such are passed to a doctor, as they should be.

That poster has an axe to grind and is making a lot of things up.

@HugoElephant I bet I don’t! They would need to be very competent to get a medical job with GCSE French! Thats about all doctors will have. No A level and no enhanced MFL learning. Why would they? Would we have a French doctor here with very very basic English? Hopefully not. There’s no evidence we export UK educated doctors to France.

Not quite re F1 F2 pay

Your link doesn't show average pay or allowances, only basic pay scales.

If you click on View pay circular you will see there are additional allowances, e.g. weekend allowance and on-call availability allowance.

Last year the Nuffield Trust estimated that the average total NHS earnings for FY1 doctors was £45,900 and £54,400 for FY2 doctors. The previous poster is correct if you combine the two grades to calculate an estimated average salary.

@Clavinova And that’s ignoring the 25% plus we contribute on top towards pensions! It’s a very good package in my view!

Band 5 nurses are senior enough to be left in charge of wards. When they are, who do you think identifies that a patient requires intervention? This is a decision that as a clinical adviser for PHSO level complaints I have seen messed up by registrars and consultants with fatal consequences. Countless times, I have personally been aware of relatively junior nursing staff preventing F1s from making the most serious errors.

If an F1 is called to a patient who is deteriorating, with any luck they will call someone more senior to make management decisions. This doesn't always happen when it should, because junior doctors too often overestimate their competence. Which isn't surprising when they are constantly flattered in social media, by the BMA, and by the nature of their training.

I am sure if I go through your posts, I will find plenty that you made up. If you want to play that game.

@Askingforafriendtoday Yes, quite. F1 £45k, F2 £55k. Equal numbers => £50k average.

digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-staff-earnings-estimates/august-2025

Just been scrolling through this, my appologies if I repeat anything. Just a few points from and NHS worker.

1. We pay taxes, unlike some "private " sector workers we cant fiddle these on self assessment, pay ourselves dividends and get out kids full student loans as one fruend has told me they did. I belive the words were creative accounting ( a very sore point in this house)
2. We.contribute to our pensions, and they are no longer final salery schemes
3. We do have KPI's ,introduced by the Tories I think, this led to ridiculous numbers of non clinical staff to manage out comes and improve efficancy. We dont need half of them, out patient booking, estates, med secs ,cleaners definatly though
4. Yes we could reform the NHS , but this will lead to much higher bills for all even if we adopt a french system, having said that perhaps it means the public will actually attend appointments and not cancel.last minute
5. Having worked over 30 years in thw NHS i can assure you all the vast majority of staff dont get breaks, normally work in excess of their hours and miss alot of family events due to shifts. Not a issue.we know what we signed up for but the we need to privatise to increase efficany is laugable, we need adequate resources to improve efficany.
6. I dont actually support the stike for pay rises BUT I would support them to stike.for improved conditions and adequte staffing.

As per PP, this is the basic rate, not adding on the unsociable / out of hours stuff which almost all FY doctors will get. Just repeating this fact, as it’s a very misleading figure that the BMA and the resident doctor supporters on this thread keep returning to.

Not quite. I did have fees (though small compared to today) and student loan. No free accommodation.

I was encouraged to go into medicine due to the EWTD coming into place. I think I was lucky and did hit the sweet spot and that my predecessors did have it harder than me just due to the hours. I respect your experience that you had it easier, and have heard the argument that you were more of a team and the demands (in terms of complexity of medicine and the patient expectations) were less, but it still comes down to hours for me! I couldn’t do it. There are far more accounts of working crazily and certainly little time for sleep or PlayStation!

We work far fewer hours these days. But still some residents think it is outrageous that they might have to stay beyond 5pm. Every other professional in different sectors knows you put the hours in, particularly at junior levels. Some of the residents seem to think they should be working like a factory worker, clocking in an out at the exact time, but expecting professionals’ wages. I’m guessing lots live in a bubble, with friendships made up from other people from medical school, and don’t realise how the outside professional people live.

When you say adequate staffing, the NHS already employs 1.2 million people. How many more does it need?

What it really needs is to step into the 21st century. Stop writing letters would be a start. Most things should be able to be done automatically with a couple of mouse clicks. Embrace AI wherever possible.

You have no idea how the NHS or medicine works @OonaStubbs . If you look at jobs which are safe from AI, from organisations and experts that know more than you, you’ll see most healthcare related jobs are ranked very safe!

What's quite interestung is that the NHS appears to cope with the resident drs on strike. Whilst I say it with tongue firmly in cheek, it's hardly indicative of an understaffed institution.

Have you studied a language to a fluency level/lived abroad/worked abroad? I have done all three in several languages so I can categorically say it is possible. Once again, you seem to think doctors are a lot dummer than they are in reality.

We went wrong during covid with all the clapping for the NHS bullshit. Which the media forced us into. Made the NHS workers think they were some sort of elite gods - they weren't, they were just doing their jobs.

Nobody in my road was forced into clapping