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 are being greedy fuckers

I support the doctors. I think their work is demanding and stressful beyond what a lot of people could imagine or tolerate.

Great, how much more tax are you prepared to pay on your income to accommodate them? I pay 62% on a slice of mine - are you happy to do the same? Or give up child benefit/DLA/free prescriptions? Because we’re currently borrowing money to pay debt interest

What about when the BMA come back for more next year, once they’ve concocted some other pie in the sky graph about doctors still being special squirrels when it comes to pay erosion?

I’m not quite clear on the relevance of what AI might be able to do instead of drs in 50 years time.

When it can do everything that drs can do now, we will all be being replaced by AI and we will all have many bigger problems to deal with, specifically the fact that there will be no economy outside of families inheriting billions.

It’s very clear that those quoting it want doctors and all healthcare workers to perform like robots, or the slaves of the Victorian Empire though. Very clear.

I’m not sure about that, if most people don’t have any money, who is paying for goods and services to keep the economy going? Consumers are needed

That isn’t doctors fault though, and how have you worked out 62%? I pay 40 on a portion of mine. Personally, I think we spend too much on benefits. We’ve created an economy (thanks to tax credits originally IMO) where employers don’t pay people enough to live on. So the government has to top up people in work with benefits. We can’t afford to keep doing this

Nope. I'm just pointing out that if doctors continue on this money grabbing striking route it's going to further incentivise and accelerate the drive to replace them with ai.

So are a lot of jobs.

They chose to enter the profession and what's more they did so when they knew that the pay was far lower than it is since Labour came to power.

Most people in highly paid, responsible jobs such as deep sea divers, structural engineers, air traffic control (are they highly paid?) are expected to perform their role with a high degree of accuracy. Any mistakes could lead to catastrophic consequences and they'd be rightly held to account.

Doctors, on the other hand, routinely misdiagnose or fail to diagnose correctly which often leads to the patient's death. Let’s face it, we all know someone whom this has happened to. Being fobbed off is de rigueur in the NHS now and they can barely be polite whilst they're doing it. Any fuck ups will be defended by their consultant. Why exactly do they believe they're value for money?

This is probably because of the terrible conditions doctors work under in the NHS. The shift patterns are ridiculous and doctors end up working long shifts and being sleep deprived and over worked. We need to improve this precisely because it impacts negatively on the care they can provide.
Care is better in the private sector for a reason,
conditions and pay are better

Doctors are paid from tax receipts for all NHS work, every penny of which derives from the private sector. Doctors do an essential job, but they do not create wealth and their pay increases have to be funded - either by raising taxes or making cuts elsewhere.

If your role is (almost) exclusively in the public sector, then you would be naive to expect immunity from the parlous state of the UK’s finances. There is also the inflationary impact - on all of us - arising from bumper salary increases across entire professions.

And the 62% marginal rate applies when you earn between 100 and 125k because your PA tapers to zero. The rate then goes “down” to 45%. It’s not progressive, is illogical, raises no money and it’s a doddle to avoid, but of course Labour won’t be seen to “help” those on 100k so the so-called grown-ups persist with nonsense about the broadest shoulders. 🤡

Thanks but that doesn’t explain why employers have been allowed to pay wages that people can’t afford to live on. The tax payers have essentially been propping up big business and their profits

That is an interesting question, I think the answer is overconfidence.

Although entry to medicine is not academically demanding it is competitive, so there is a tendency for medical students to start off with a sense of unmerited accomplishment, which is encouraged by parents and teachers who are vicariously possessed with the same feeling. You don't have to look far on Mumsnet threads to find them described as "awesome". This is not a good start.

Then, in the interests of student satisfaction (and economy) the difficult aspects of medical education are avoided at many medical schools, so graduates emerge without having been excessively challenged, and with only a superficial grasp of the basic sciences on which it is necessary to draw in tricky situations. Graduates of these medical schools are more likely to fail annual reviews of competency, postgraduate exams, and be referred to the GMC. Crucially, they also more likely to overestimate their competence, and refer to themselves as "expert clinicians". The clapping, media and political flattery (now fortunately historic) probably didn't help.

Overconfidence is fatal, cutting out doubt and uncertainty that trigger analytical thinking, inevitably resulting in "fuck ups" as you succinctly put it.

@Lyra25 You surely know the wages have stayed low because employers know there is universal credit. This mitigates against higher salaries. It’s too broad and should be scaled back. It’s a good reason to work part time too. Dsis did it for years. No ambition (professionally qualified in a health profession) but preferred to work 16 hours in a charity shop. She could have done her old job and earned a lot more, but preferred benefits. It’s the nation we have become. Others do work and pay tax snd others do the minimum they can get away with.

Doctors do, of course, make a contribution to society by keeping people fit to work but the productivity levels are so low in the NHS, we are failing in that aim. Add in the not wanting to work, and as a country we have poor productivity and high costs.

Yes that’s exactly my point, why are tax payers assisting businesses by propping up workers with additional benefit, when we can’t pay doctors properly. Businesses should pay a wage sufficient for the economy the operate in

I'm not sure anyone has claimed care from doctors is better in the private sector?

In my all too extensive experience of both systems in the last 4 years, the care from doctors is the same, a range from excellent, through competent, to barely competent, down to incompetent.

What is different is mostly in the reception areas, visiting hours, the single rooms by default, whether or not clinics run to time, and the negotiation with the customer when it suits them to come in rather than being sent a date without consultation.

Are you one of those people who think that increased costs to business can simply be taken out of profits?

The result of stopping this would be mass unemployment. The government know this, and continue it, because it's cheaper than paying benefits to the unemployed.

I agree it's a nonsense to tax companies and then use that tax to subsidise the wages of the people they employ but although people are very happy to call for the minimum wage to be increased, I don't see anyone calling for taxes on businesses to be reduced to pay for it.

Your comment about “wages that people can’t afford to live on” certainly does not apply to doctors, for starters. They start well over UK national average salary on day 1, when they can’t even cannulate a patient without help. As I posted upthread, my DH’s NHS salary as a consultant is now £200k.

Wages are nothing to do with what governments have “allowed” business to do. The biggest factor in UK wage growth is weak productivity - ours has been stagnant for c 15 years. On a per-capita basis, it’s absolutely piss poor (and declining). We also have a low investment rate in capital and skills which is like a vicious circle spitting out even more low productivity. The UK economy is heavily weighted towards lower-paid sectors such as retail, hospitality and care which have wafer-thin margins. Despite these factors, we’ve raised welfare spending (eg tax credits) and NMW aggressively, increasing the tax burden one way or another. Oh and we’ve also got higher costs for housing, energy and transport, which means that although UK wages look pretty bang average on paper, they don’t go as far.

Not an environment in which anyone should expect a 30% pay rise, much less a second one.

@Lyra25 The nhs works in shifts because people don’t get ill at convenient times. GPs don’t do shifts. Not many consultants probably. They have set work patterns. This is why operating theatres are empty at weekends unless leased out to a private consultant - as happens at my local ophthalmic centre. Doctors should work
more shifts to get the waiting lists down, one could argue! The resident doctors get paid for non standard shifts and get paid overtime. There’s a big difference between basic salary and actual salaries.

Which medical schopls are uou referring to? Most and more are pretty vague terms.
Here is the GMC data https://edt.gmc-uk.org/progression-reports/arcp

Not academically demanding to enter medical school...3 A's at A level plus certain scores on the entry tests, either UKCAT or BMAT, certain scores at interview

PBL (and by some metrics, post-2000) medical schools.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32404148/

AAB is enough for standard entry, and much lower for gateway courses and graduate entry medical schools. UCAT/BMAT are not measures of academic ability.
https://www.medschools.ac.uk/for-students/applying-to-medical-school/entry-requirements/

(Contrary to what you might expect, 4% of entrants to gateway courses are from independent schools; only 11% of all gateway entrants are from the lowest socio-economic group, 46% are from the highest.)
https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Unequal-Treatment.pdf

edit: capitalisations

All valid points but worth pointing out that these required stats are far from what many medical students actually achieve. My DC got 4 A stars at A-level and a top 1% UCAT. Their peer group at medical school had achieved similarly. They far outperformed what was actually required and didn't consider courses like financial economics, not because they weren't up to them, but rather because they really wanted to become doctors. They are humble and hard working and know there is always more to learn in medicine. None of them, as far as I know, is striking. There is a danger here of the general public turning against all young doctors and tarring them with the same brush, much the same as I remember happened with investment bankers as a group after the 2007-2008 financial crash.

Most of those do require 3 A's or higjher, which is what my DC's cohort achieved.
BMAT, discontinued in 2024, certainly did test academic ability https://www.theuniguide.co.uk/advice/ucas-application/bmat-when-it-is-what-it-costs-and-how-to-prepare
Strange that you assert entry to medical school is not academically competitive 🤔

I’m sure we can all agree that doctors are not dimwits. The grades required to study medicine and the learning needed to qualify as a doctor are proof of that.

But I doubt that doctors are as intellectually capable as many lawyers, or as many who work in the various areas of finance or the civil service. Rote learning is the name of the game in medicine. The higher achieving graduates of arts subjects and of law are in the main more articulate and academically able than medics.

That’s not a reason for doctors not to be rewarded properly, of course. They carry a lot of responsibility. But they are rewarded pretty well, frankly; and their enviable pay, progression and pensions aren’t a reflection of doctors’ rare academic talent.

But I doubt that doctors are as intellectually capable as many lawyers, or as many who work in the various areas of finance or the civil service. Rote learning is the name of the game in medicine. The higher achieving graduates of arts subjects and of law are in the main more articulate and academically able than medics.

What an unevidenced basis comment. Each of those professions and medicine are taught how to use their brains in different ways that serve the role of their job. They are all AAA grade professions so there will be a spectrum of Sheldons and Missys within that.
I work extensively with lawyers and finance within my NHS role and each are equally as intelligent but in different ways. I find the inability of the finance gurus to accept the data may be wrong because the computer does not lie so frustrating. Barristers superb brains in the main but again they apply principles in a very different way to a doctor. Doctors very varied again some supremely logical and others very disorgansied in their thought processes. The doctors generally are quicker to adapt to a sidewinder coming in, re focus and get back on with the task in hand - it is interesting watch different people approache the same issues according to their training, Human factors which is so much of what medicine is, do not seem to register with the legal profession and finance sometimes -not a criticism more an observation.