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

This talk of 70k for resident doctors & megabucks when they become consultants - do people not understand that doctors don't have access to the beginning rungs of this ladder to 70k, and the govt block on even replacing consultants who retire, never mind creating any posts, means there are fewer senior doctors to train the resident doctors.
This has the effect of increasing waiting lists and worsening outcomes for patients.
Edited for spelling

@TooBored1but the govt has said they are willing to do a deal on things like student debt linked to NHS employment, exam fees, accommodation and timetabling for rotation. It’s the basic pay that they won’t and can’t give way on

@Locutus2000yes but are those in other jobs expected to move around each rotation so maybe 6 times in three years?

We are initially training lots of doctors at uni. Then they come out and need traininng on the job the old watch one do one teach one. In some cases they are doing a procedure which they have never done before so googling. Training last around 6 years and the Government will not commit to that preferring to get doctors in on yearly contracts.

They then move on. My daughter has seen locum consultants sacked one week to be brought back in a few days as anyone is supposedlu better than no one. Becoming a locumn is much easier than becoming a trainee.

Thet have not said what the deal will be. Why not improvw conditions if thats the right thing to do and see if strike support within the profession diminishes?

I fully support the strikes for all the reasons already listed.

Hospital training is nine years minimum post graduation, 2 years foundation then 7 years specialist training (including sets of exams).
Moving jobs every three to six months, different hospitals standard of 48 hour weeks episodes of 12+ hour long day, night or weekend shifts. Accommodation moves between jobs. Trying to afford a flat rental particularly in the cities when up against finance people who get paid a fortune for gambling with other people's money.

@Letsbefrom what I can see from the interview with the BMA leader he’s refusing to talk about any of that until they settle on a higher pay structure. If they can’t settle on the pay offer at all then the NHS doesn’t know how much money they have left for the rest of the deal. They need to agree to the pay and then get down to discussing the rest of the offer in total. He actually says in the interview that Streeting wants to know what his counter offer is and he’s not prepared to offer anything

They have to decide when they are still children (16ish) that they they want to do a medical degree. A lot can change by the time they are 23.

they’re not pricing themselves out of jobs because they already have the option to move abroad where the pay is much higher. And that is precisely what
many of them are doing.

Change of name was recent. Anyone not a consultant is a resident doctor. The first two years after uni are f1 and f2. My sons first shift as an f1 was a night shift. He cluld not access all of the wards he was responsible for as his entrance pass did not work properly. He had to take long detours around the outside of the building.

He rang me the nect day to tell me not to worry as he was fine but on his way home he had thought about crashing the car so he did not have to go back again.

He is about fours years post uni but no trainong contract. I am going to miss him so much but I can see its the best thing for him. And he does care about poor pay for others as well. Apparently the nurses at his hospital get a lower rate for overtime than their usual.How can that be right ?

There arw jobs yearly contracts but not training. These can be attractive to graduates who have want to work here but are not UK trained. They may not be familiar with the NHS.

Similarly those jobs in New Zealand and Aus are attractive to the graduates we have trained. Also the working conditions are better and the admi there considers if yiu can survive A and E in the UK you will cope there.

There arw jobs yearly contracts but not training. These can be attractive to graduates who have want to work here but are not UK trained. They may not be familiar with the NHS.

Similarly those jobs in New Zealand and Aus are attractive to the graduates we have trained. Also the working conditions are better and the admi there considers if yiu can survive A and E in the UK you will cope there.

We pay doctors far less than other western countries, and we don't even give them a decent chance of getting a job when they've finished their training. Not to mention expecting them to move to a new place every few years. They're also now being replaced with non medically qualified staff. You can demand they be satisfied with their current pay all you like OP, but they have the option of much better pay and working conditions abroad so they will continue to leave, and who wouldn't in that situation.

I'm a consultant and fully support the strikes. Conditions are terrible for residents now. The ridiculous FY allocation process, loss of accommodation, messes, demise of the firm and team working. This is before you even get to the training post debacle and pay.

I accept I am not badly paid at Consultant level, but earn far less than I would do in Australia. I bet I would have an office and a secretary there too.

And agree - we really need bright and motivated young people in medicine. Pay needs to keep up otherwise all will be lost to tech and finance.

The issue is inflationary pay rises. Those in the private sector have years with no or little payrises. I appreciate it’s not a race to the bottom…. But it anyone entitled to inflationary payrises?

Saying that I appreciate non doctors can change employer which doctors cannot. The messaging I’ve seen in the news is about inflation matching payrises which is not reasonable - but this may be a news tactic to generate the bad press!

We pay our resident doctors much better than they are paid in most of Europe and the US.
Australia 2026 salaries are below in dollars
tate / Territory
Intern (PGY1) Base Salary (AUD)
RMO (PGY2) Base Salary (AUD)
Senior RMO / PGY3+ (AUD)
New South Wales (NSW)
76,000
83,000
88,000+

Base lower than Victoria/Queensland but total pay rises with penalties
Victoria (VIC)
80,000+
87,000+
92,000+
Slightly higher than NSW at all levels
Queensland (QLD)
85,000+
92,000+
98,000+
Strong super contribution and RMO pay
Western Australia (WA)
86,000+
93,000+
100,000+
Higher total packages due to overtime/penalty rates
Australian Capital Territory (ACT)
88,000+
95,000+
102,000+
Highest starting base, strong incentives for interns and PGY2+
South Australia (SA)
78,000+
85,000+
90,000+
Slightly lower than VIC and QLD; growing with experience
Tasmania (TAS)
75,000+
82,000+
87,000
Lower starting base; penalties improve total earnings
Northern Territory (NT)
83,000+
90,000+
96,000+
Higher base than NSW; rural allowances often added

Convert that in GBP then they are roughly equivalent. What they do in OZ is impose punitive rates on overtime - so if you do overtime which is pretty standard then your pat goes up exponentially. What is often a shock for UK doctors is the hours basic hours are 40per week but regular overtime is expected and pushes it up to 60-80hrs for many. Salary packaging also helps.

So it is a misnomer to say they are paid better than the UK - basic hours are roughly equivalent.

I am a doctor and do not support the strikes. These are the generation with the lowest hours, best training structure and support than any generation in the last 40 yrs. That is not to say it can not be improved further but the rhetoric that they have it harder than any previous generation is simply not true. Different challenges but not necessarily harder.

What does need changing is medical school teaching and preparation for the reality of medical working life, which many are woefully unprepared for.

Postgraduate training needs some tweaking- I am firmly of the belief that guaranteed training from FY1 to consultant with no competition, in the area you want and speciality you want is bad for the profession and patients.
Working in one hospital your whole career is not good as you do not get exposed to better and worse ways of doing things ,doctors need to be challenged to evolve healthcare and change is good. Changing every 6 months is not necessary but 3/4 hospitals in a region in 8 years is a reasonable compromise.
The difference in standards in hospitals from one side of Birmingham to the other is immense and if you train in a failing hospital/department and go nowhere else when do you realise that the training is bad and you are delivering poor care?

Campaigning for a reduction in the extortionate loan interest rate for all students should be campaigned for - loans and fees have been around since the late 1990s this is now nearly 30 yrs. What has changed is the structure and interest rate which is completely wrong.

PRevious junior doctors have campaigned for change and the current structure is in some part what has been asked for - loss of the firm structure has been a disaster for much of medicine as no one is accountable. Where it is held onto more -surgery - then surgeons are called old fashioned for expecting care of their patients delivered by a small team who know them well.
People want more variety - so foundation schools have given them more variety particularly in the less represented specialiites ie, psych, public health etc.
No new training programmes will suit everyone but what they can not do is change every few years on the latest trend - stability is essential.

The strikes were fought on the wrong premise.

The government doesn't.
They want the cheapest doctors they can get. So all the good doctors go overseas, or really bright people don't bother training in the first place.
This is the case for all public sector jobs. If police officers or teachers earned twice as much we would get better quality candidates.

Does the pay rise apply to everyone on the pay scale as it does with teachers?

@lifetheuniverse thanks, very informative.

Selection for training should be based on what more senior doctors think of yiur practice not if you have a masters have presentef at conference or had something published (thats for IMT training).

Moving hospitals very reasonable except if its three years in Cornwall then three years in Devon of Sheffield then Hull of the whole of Wales.

You pick a training programme knowing which hospitals you will need to rotate through. Some regions have wider distances to travel others are more compact.

If you do not get a training place then you can make the criteria yourself by applying for trust grade jobs which are usually 6-12 months and that will require moving hospitals a bit more.

Selection became portfolio based to remove the bias of a consultant dissing your chances is they did not like you. The problem is that ticking the boxes on a portfolio allows weaker doctors to pass through because you can focus on the box tick rather than the application of what that means. Some people are v good a t box ticking but not good at the actual job. Selection is not done F2F anymore it is all remote which most of us think is wrong. Yes going for an interview practical session is time consuming but are we really picking our docs of the future by computer rather than looking at them as a whole holistically

The government want to seem to be solving the situation so they increase university places. Naive 18 year olds take these up naive parents like me encourage them. So people like my son will see you in A and E assess you but they may need to get another specialist to see you so you wait. He may think you are well enough to go home but certain things must be reviewed by a senior so you wait.

At weekends lots of seniors disappear and you may be cared for by a doctor straight out of medical school covering a number of wards. They may ask a nurse to perform some procedure and have done it before but are not comfortable doing it. The doctor has never done it before so they Google and hope for the best.

Before you get the interview you are picked by computer. Have you published do you have masters and you don't get to pick as there are not enough jobs. Surely time working for the health service should be a criteria as well.

Portfolio selection in the Yorkshire and Liverpool area is very rare