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?

Oh yes,
those lazy bloody doctors. Barely lift a finger. Ffs, get a job.

I support the doctors strike 100%. Having worked in the nhs for years alongside doctors I think they are worth their weight in gold.

Same.

We shouldn't be accepting the minimum.

Doctors need to get on with being doctors. They should stop going on strike. If they want to earn more money they should do something else. They are already paid far more than most people.

I honestly don't know. My views on this keep shifting.

What I do know from the usually fairly well informed, previously-supportive people I've heard/seen discussing this in rl, is that the junior doctors are seemingly at risk of purging public support.

The timing isn't great.

Well, they earn less than most of the bricklayers I've met. Although that will of course change with experience.

Where does this end though. I mean they wanted a pay rise last year and got it. Next year they will all want a mansion, a Bentley and a free massage at work given by the nurses who always get completely shafted in and nhs pay award!

@MyBrightPeer Resident doctors are not just young. They can certainly be older!

@Gwenhwyfar It’s totally normal for employers to ask for training monies back if employees leave. I had a contract that required I worked for my employer for 2 years after I took their money for qualifications. That was in local government. If something is given, then it’s not unreasonable to expect a return. Doctors don’t stop training once they graduate. Lots more goes into it and then too many clear off. They need to accept their massive pensions and pay are adequate compensation and they earn better as graduates than any other group of graduates and mostly get jobs! No 1000/1 odds for them.

It already costs us over £200k to train these people into a job,
the training is pretty variable, often not during office hours, often doesn't train you to do the actual job, and does require quite a bit (!) of effort and investment on the student's behalf (the universities/Trusts gets the cash...what they chose to do with it is variable).... it's definitely not a freebie! Quite a lot of the 'training' when i was young was frankly not worth the cash you think you spent on it!

often with an almost guarantee of employment (who else gets that ffs?!),
that's increasingly not the case

loads of choice for where they go and specialise
also not so much the case

and which will get them earning well into six figures after not that many years, placing them in the top earning few percent.
also not necessarily the case. (20yrs in, working full time and still not earning six figures (and never will)... to be fair it was my choice to not become a consultant (one that more and more people seem to be making), but it's frankly lazy to repeat the myth that all doctors will be earning £100,000 in no time).

I think that lots of people don’t understand their role or value. The responsibility that they have and the expectations put on them.
I support them.

"they earn better as graduates than any other group of graduates and mostly get jobs! "

They should do, but I'm not convinced. It's also not just the money. At least a few years ago, their working conditions were terrible with the kind of overtime hours that would be illegal for anyone else. Has that got better now?

But I won't be on a trolley waiting because I'll know where to find the junior doctors, in golf clubs and health spas and Jaguar dealerships. Greedy so and sos. The rest of us get a measly couple of % payrise because the government increased employer NI, probably to fund the doctors and their luxury lifestyles.

Doctors have always been greedy. When the NHS was started it was noted that they had to have their mouths stuffed with gold to go along with it.

Guess they’re trying to get all these strikes in whilst Labour are in power. Labour have form for caving in to strikers….

I support them. But I can understand and sympathise with those who don’t wrt pay. Everyone is working hard but feeling really poor at the moment.

Your ignorance is astounding though if you think junior doctors are lazy. I’m often a bit gobsmacked when I hear what my cousin (senior registrar in a medical specialty, does most of her oncalls down in accident and emergency it seems) goes through in 4x12h shifts.

I agree, my pay rise has been 1.4% this year, 0 the previous 3 years yet costs have obviously gone up up and up.

on 36k a year?! 🤔

The facts are that junior doctors actually would have started their training well aware of the pay on offer. It clearly wasn’t bad enough to put them off a career in medicine. And then a couple of years in to get a rise of 28%…..

Im losing support for them. I have no doubt they work hard and they've been shafted. But theyve had nearly 30% increase in pay recently. They arent the only essential people working in health care. Im not saying they dont deserve a good wage, but they arent the only ones who do either. As far as I can see the country is utterly fucked in terms of paying people what they deserve.

And while its not a race to the bottom - EVERYONE earning a wage has seen a loss in real terms over the past few years. Everyones wages are stagnating, everyones bills are costing more.

I wish everyone would stop saying that we're getting poorer as a country. We aren't - GDP per capita is basically the same as in 2008 after accounting for inflation. Yes there has been stagnation but we are not actually poorer collectively, the pot of money available is essentially the same. The reason normal people are poorer is wealth inequality. That has changed a lot.

The junior doctors are being expected to take a hit because of inequality, just like so many other ordinary working people. They are right to stand up for themselves, and the rest of us should too. It's not us vs the doctors, there's enough money to pay us all at 2008 rates. We need to tackle inequality so that this can happen.

I went to a wedding which was more or less entirely doctors. They seemed to think themselves very special and better than the rest of us!

There’s plenty of money in this country for the right people, the aristos and footballers and landlords etc.

This country can afford to pay people with skills to do a decent job.

It’s just going to the wrong people in the wrong places. It’s been following the same path as America to reward the aristos and the feckless. Have a damned good think about just what you want to value and who you are calling entitled. The doctors pay for their own training now and can take their skills anywhere in the world.

I don't think they should be on strike yet again. But I don't think they are greedy , selfish entitled and certainly not lazy.

They are not lazy but they have lost all common sense when it comes to pay and the economy.

Lots of people are in posts when pay has not kept up with economic changes - wage growth has been pants. But you don’t see other public sector or private sectors workers permanently striking as their pay has not kept in line with inflation etc.

i would say that this had been going on for so long with the ridiculous BMA leadership that they have lost public support. The country is struggling with debt mountain and a cost of living crisis but this latest BMA action is costing the country a small fortune.

Birmingham bin men?? Amazon warehouse men?? Train driving men (There’s a link there isn’t there, all men. Women in healthcare and schools aren’t allowed to go on strike).