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 support the resident doctors, not so much the BMA who I don't feel have served their members well. This is the problem when unions have a political agenda. A minority of members voted for this strike but it goes ahead.

I think people forget just how skilled a job it is and how badly they are treated in their early careers.
The decision of the government to withdraw 1000 training posts out of spite is bizarre. The NHS needs those future consultants and we already face shortages because of failure to plan.

Having said all that the BMA need to read the room. They had overwhelming public support two years ago, very little now.

Going to work overseas. I’ve friends who are junior doctors (ridiculous term for a qualified doctor) and they are looking into opportunities in other countries.

So it's OK to slag off people who could one day save your life or the life of someone you love but not a peep about the politicians who always approve their 'independently advised' payrise and have just awarded themselves £3000 extra to help with the cost of living crisis. You don't have to train for years to become a politician, having a brain or any grasp on reality seems to be optional, yet you get a payrise every year and all sorts of subsidies.....I support the doctors. My family have needed them a lot over recent years and I have been grateful for their knowledge and compassion. (I'm also married to a now retired GP so know how brutal becoming a doctor is.)

I rather the doctors are paid than money spend on war.

Exactly

This - 💯!!!!

Just ban them from striking. They are paid enough. I wouldn't complain for earning £42k.

This is a state funded healthcare system so they earn what the state can pay.

You really want to improve wages, have a private system.

The only way to increase their pay is for them to take more of my money (my taxes).

Bloody hell if they are only on £18 an hour that is a disgrace and all those posters thinking they don’t deserve more need to cop on.

I speak as a doctor - I do not support the strikes.
This generation of resident doctors have the best working conditions of the last 40 yrs with the lowest number of weekly average hours than any previous generation. That is not to say that conditions can not improve further but am heartily sick of my fellow professional colleagues quoting hours and working conditions of 20 yrs ago which they do not experience and have no understanding of.

The last pay rise was significant and all professions would like pay restoration but that will bankrupt the country. They are no more worthy than physios, nurses etc who should have the same - this aspect of their campaign is unrealistic.

The belief they should have monies now and the gap between a resident and a consultant of 20yrs is not big - showing a lack of respect for experience and learning.

Pay a senior resident on 44 hrs per week is grossing 95K +
A first year resident on 44 hrs per week is grossing 44-52K

These are no small salaries and sorry lots of jobs people train for a long time and have a lot of qualifications

Every resident doctor has time to take a pee and eat something in a shift - this is bad time management and a lack of self care.

Lack of jobs - is complex and does need some work done on it but the expectation that I will have a job in the area I want to live, never move for experience, be paid a decent salary, reduce my hours, not work weekends and out of hours, in the speciality I want when I want regardless of my suitability is not a great attitude to have. Would love to see all these unemployed doctors we were told would happen - where are they, being in a job that is not a training job but being paid and still learning does not mean you are unemployed which some of them seem to think it does.

If they were campaigning for a reduction in student loan interest for all students they would garner my full support but this I can not support. It is entitled and tone deaf.

I reckon a lot of good would come of upping wages of actual employed home carers (not uc deemed carers) and support workers, bet lots of old folk would suddenly be treated better and not bed block every damn hospital countrywide (my county hospital has to be 90% and only cause there is a kids ward with 12 beds).

umm no. A doctor carries the can for anything they do wrong, just like any other healthcare professional.

Well said.

The amount of work that has been pushed onto nurses and pharmacists makes you wonder why the doctors pay is going up at all. A family member had cancer chemotherapy for over 2 years and only saw a doctor for the diagnosis and initial prescription, rest of it was done by the oncology nurses or pharmacists. Scans and reassessments were done by the radiology assistants (not sure if that's what they were actually called but they weren't docs.

We'll take them. We'll pay them a lot more too! And appreciate them. (Waves from Australia.)

Where would we get the money from?

I find posts like this a bit weird as unless you examined all the government budgets in detail how can you confidently say there is or isn’t the money?

I could tell you the dept of agriculture underspends by £6bn per year and you wouldn’t have a clue whether it was true or not

My son works in A and E and could his job quicker if they had enough rooms too see patients.

That's not entirely true.

And this post should be publicised more widely. Straight from the horses mouth and telling the truth about the salaries that the BMA repeatedly lie about to garner sympathy. An FY1 does not get just £36k salary, by the time the extras are added in, it is £42k if not more. That's a huge amount for some fresh out of university. The entitlement is outstanding.

I don’t believe they’re lazy however all the extra time they put in to get their hours up that they talk about, they are paid overtime for. This is at a higher rate than their normal pay. I don’t believe for one second I’m afraid that they now deserve a greater pay rise than any other person in the public sector.

Exactly - a huge percentage of UK trained doctors can’t get a job after their foundation training ( year 2 post qualification) . This is because the NHS opens posts to non UK qualified doctors AND the government subsidises allied health professionals such as nurses and physician assistants to do the job ( or some of it) .
The issue is you can’t achieve a medical qualification in 2 years so those doing the job need supervising by doctors

Also a lot of ppl who would not even get onto the medicine course at uni, so even with 3 A* A levels you are not guaranteed a place. They have worked their arises off through school,college and uni, work very very lo g hours,often have little support as short staffed every where and very stressful interactions with colleagues and patients not to mention families of patients. Yes I support them, no I am no where near being clever enough to have even been considered.

They get enough. Next we'll have the teachers out and let's face it they only do 9-3.30 for 39 weeks a year.

Holy fuck is that all they get?

Appreciate I work part time but Im on more than that per hour and whilst it is a niche job and I am a freelancer, my highest official educational level is GCSE, and I am not saving lives, I am sat in my own home behind a desk!

No, based on that alone, they're not being greedy selfish entitled or lazy.

‘Extras’ is a bit of a weird way of putting it, makes it sound like some kind of bonus. From what I understand the base salary for standard hours is 38K but it ends up being higher than that as night shifts are paid more (rightly so!) And, again from what I understand, this is based on a 48h week, which is pretty high.