Resident doctors what on earth ...

[Wellwhatnowbellaboo]

...are you playing at. A 28% increase Wes Street today said since they came into power. The BMA might be bullish but if you are a junior doctor give us your view please ? In any other professional job in industry you may have studied for years but you start at the bottom and you work your way up and money and progression comes over time.
I'd like to hear from actual resident doctors now they have their last day off.
And if you are not a doctor do you support this or not? Why?
I'm all for making things fairer for all but this is now a joke and putting people's lives at risk for more money is not the ethos I'd expect from health care

My son who is a junior doctor is off to Aus. His relationship broke down due to stress of funding a training place in general area where gf lives.

He has been locumning in A and E. He was interviewed for training in A and E and anaesthetics got rejected applied fot Aus offered a job in Brisbane. Training overr there in A and E is easier you need to work for about a year get three references and are in.

You complete your training without moving around. Now he has been offered A and E training here three years in Devon followed by three years in Cornwall. I guess someone turned a placw down. He just can't face the settling then moving around agiain. He wants to put down roots.

My daughter also a doctor and wants to specialise in palliative care therefore differnt route. She has applied and not got an interview twice. Its done on points. She had a masters but its in community medicine so does not count. She is completing another in palliative care which she pays for herself. She has undertsken additional exams paid for by herself but they do not help you get in just means if she does get in she had done them alreasy.

She has a publication and has presented at conferences but still needs more points to get an interview. She is losing heart. She worked a yearly contract in palliative care and now has a yearly contract in a virtual ward that tries to help people stay at home even when very sick. During the weekends she has no senior support. If someone is very sick she had to advise them to go to A and E even if it means a long corridor wait.

She frequently stays late no overtime being paid. She goes the extra mile gets great feedback from patients and families and seniors. She just wants to progress. She was not going to join this strike until Mr Streeting took away the additional training posts. She has enjoyed the break catching up with friends and being away from the pressure.

I second everything @Letsbe says - DD off to Canada due to no job available here, not even moving around frequently on rotations. Of her cohort, more than 50% are in a similar position post foundation - ie 5/6 years med school, 2 years foundation experience, huge loan debt & no training jobs. Some have a year of a fellowship, some are locuming - that is, taking shifts here & there, as available - but the majority are resorting to other gig jobs to pay bills & making plans to leave the UK.
It feels incredibly shortsighted of this govt.
And note that med schools places are rising 🤦🏽‍♀️why??

I fully support the doctors in their mission to have pay reflective of their jobs, better working conditions and adequate training places.

But I think it's a mistake to have continued striking at this point, they won some reasonable* concessions from the government and continuing to demand more at this point was always going to backfire. Give it a couple of years and then continue with actions as needed but striking again immediately after some wins means they lose public support, alienate the government and have lost out on training places.

*better than so far

I fully support the resident doctors their training is a shambles and the government is lying through its teeth

Well you can ask that question until the cows come home OP, but if all our resident Drs go abroad and stay there we will all be screwed.

One doctor dies by suicide every 3 weeks in England. Tells you all you need to know about their conditions and how valued they are. They deserve to be the most highly paid sector of society for the responsibility and work that they do, yet they are very undervalued by both the public and the government.
They are all buggering off (or the really clever ones don’t apply to medicine at all) and I don’t blame them leaving us with non doctors providing the healthcare.

If there are no jobs here, but the people in jobs here are doing massive overtime, for high salaries, my thought would be why not have more posts here but on a lower wage and with lower overtime? So divvying up the money and hours between more people.
I'm sure there's a good reason why not, so if someone would explain that'd be great.

Yes there has been a pay rise but pay was massively eroded prior to that .
To be honest this is more about lack of jobs for those finishing foundation training than the money now.

Imagine 6 years of study running up a huge debt. Two years of working doing a rubbish job, with huge pressure, away from family and friends, no job security , no idea where you will be next then bang you are unemployed as Wes has spent all the money on other HCPs.

All that hard work to be left in huge debt - that is why resident docs are striking . I was a resident doc aged 40 doing major surgery so please don’t use the word ‘junior’ . Many of these doctors are not junior .

So what is the ISSUE now - why strike for higher PAY if the issue isntcpay at all its availability of jobs? Isn't higher pay making that even worse as with more cost comes less roles to fund it and its a vicious cycle ? I'm not sure what the answer is and I don't know the ins and out of the sector ...but if job availability is an issue why not have quotas for doctors at uni? Why would we want thousands to study if the supply and demand don't add up ?

@olympicsrock side tracking here but when did the name change from junior doctors to resident doctors happen? I know it did, just missed the when! And are they still referred to as foundation years?

Universities have to make their money somehow. Its partly a consequence from the changes to tuition fees and university funding under the conservatives (which is a separate debate) - universities are now reliant on the most in-demand degrees and foreign students, medicine ticks both boxes.

NHS pay has been public information for as long as I can remember. If they are unhappy on a starting salary of £38k then go into another career to begin with.

I think many students don't realise what additional costs there will be until they're doing their medical degree - doctors have to self fund registration, training courses etc.

I'm not suggesting they shouldn't, but it's an objective fact that doctors are underpaid for the work and hours they do, the additional costs to being a doctor eat into their salary. I don't know any doctor - and I know a few, at various points in their career - who'd recommend it as a career now, which tells you a lot about their working conditions.

Well once they hit £70k+ they are in the highest paid 10% of the population. They earn over £70k in junior roles with overtime when they are in specialist training and then as basic in the first year of being a consultant. Top 5% once earning a consultants senior salary.

Totally agree about more training places and how competitive it has become ost foundation. But they are pricing themselves out of these extra posts abs I’m surprised they don’t see it. Plus the impact of £250million strike action on the NHS.

The stats don’t support the BMA case. The requirement for more training places and paying exam fees and better timetables could be dealt with if the money wasn’t all going on paying for the strikes.
Can the BMA feasibly still claim junior doctors are underpaid?

https://www.thetimes.com/article/895fa55c-65eb-446d-8542-ef5eadfa0158?shareToken=20143a076465cee7ad67c2de1e72f16f

If you do t want to open the link here’s 2 screenshots

being a junior doctor is no walk in the park. The worst thing they did was get rid of accomodation for junior doctors. Stupidity as the junior doctors have to commute or be moving around frequently so no stability and that’s expensive

Doctors don't get paid for overtime. That is part of the point they ate trying to make. It means that their hourly rate is massively reduced.

If I've understood correctly hasn't the offer of the extra training places been cancelled now they went ahead with the strike? They've shot themselves in the foot now in my view by undermiming their own argument. Initially the public were very supportive but this is eroded now.

There wasn’t going to be “extra” Doctors though, it was simply going to be a shuffling around between job titles really.

The number of university places for medicine is set by the government. Universities are financially penalized if they over recruit. Places for international students are also capped, eg 10 places for international students per 220 home students.

Greedy fuckers

Thanks. Some of that comparison is rather disingenuous as medical students study for longer accruing more tuition fee etc debt. They also have longer terms and more contact hours per week, meaning it is hard to work to support themselves.

Some of those professions will have fees paid for them, or, eg many law, finance etc jobs have golden handshakes, paying off student debts

As a genuine question, do we not want to attract the best of the best to the medical profession?

being a junior doctor is no walk in the park.

Many jobs which pay far less are no walk in the park either, including many of their fellow hospital staff upon whom the BMA look down upon.