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

Junior Doctors seem to ignore the fact that equally qualified people (civil servants, lawyers, consultants etc) do 100s of hours of unpaid overtime on a regular basis.

There is an underlying assumption that because they are DOCTORS they are somehow special and have a right to expect a salary/work life balance that others can only dream of.

Training places is a massive issue. The Trust I work for was asked to take on more doctors in training by converting some “locally employed” doctor posts to training posts. A training post comes with very specific requirements around study leave, professional leave, educational supervision etc which do not have to be factored in for locally employed doctor posts. These requirements leave a gap in terms of service delivery and so for each training post we would have had a cost to bear of around £15K/year. That was a huge barrier to saying yes and really limited what we could offer given the many millions we need to save this year We were then, in a final bid to stave off the strike, offered more, but pressured departments can only offer so much and if you have a trainee you have to be able to offer X number of types of clinic, Y number of certain operating lists etc.

Regardless of whether the doctors were right to strike, it was a mistake to withdraw the training places initially offered. I think it reflected very poorly on Kier and Wes. It is also disingenuous when the 1000 training places were not new places but already existing locally employed doctor places.

What's clear however is that we need to train NOW the doctors the country needs in the future otherwise the population is going to feel the impact of this damaging decision in the decades to come.

There's a shortage of speciality training posts and consultant posts and this problem needs to be addressed urgently. The current rapid expansion of university medical school places without any consideration of a lack of training and consultant posts is a mistake but little is mentioned in the media about that.

An elderly relative was admitted to A&E over this strike period and it was mostly the resident doctors that dealt with him. Although under a consultant, most of the contact with doctors was with the resident doctors who did a fantastic job. When he was admitted, he couldn't bear weight due to a fracture and was very distressed. He has now had an operation and is able to walk again.

I think the dispute with the BMA could have been handled much better otherwise it's patients that will suffer in the long term.

Solidarity to the junior doctors ✊🏻.

I fully support them in struggle and hope they win. Hopefully it would give confidence to others to take industrial action for fair pay and conditions, especially those in the NHS.

@Letsbe
Anyone not a consultant is a resident doctor
That’s not necessarily true. Quite a lot of us are not consultants and not residents either (we’re SAS’s).
Becoming a locumn is much easier than becoming a trainee
Becoming a locum may be straightforward, but staying one is less so. Revalidation for one isn’t that easy for the perma-locums.

There arw jobs yearly contracts but not training
CESR’ing is an option for those who don’t get onto the conventional training programmes and 'create' their own programme but again is not easy.

As a NHS worker who as been subject to exactly the same restrictions in pay and reduction of pension etc from the moment I started in the NHS, so with the utmost sympathy and understanding…. All these strikes are now doing is emphasising how much better and more efficiently the NHS operates when the consultants are in charge. There are a number of factors to consider here - including how hands off some consultants can be… but at the end of the day, these strikes do illustrate how much more training junior doctors need in order to be efficient and competent. I think there is movement which can be made in promoting education and better support of junior doctors, but I don’t think raising pay is the best use of the money.

The BMA want pay restoration to 2008 levels. Why on earth did they not do something about this 16 -17 years ago ? Absolutely ridiculous to be talking about this now, all these years later.

It's not (only) about pay, although your 28% statistic doesn't capture how much pay had been eroded by inflation since 2008.

It's playing thousands a year for professional membership, insurance and exam entry, none of which you can practice or progress without. And it the biggest thing is the lack of training posts. You say yourself "you start at the bottom and work up" - that used to be the idea. But the government isn't funding resigtrar training places and even if you manage to get one of the very few available (after sitting many rounds of exams at about £400 a go) you then need to move across the country to wherever you get allocated. Once there you can't settle either as you will be expected to rotate every six months for years.

It's incredibly disruptive to family life, you can't buy a house even if you could afford one, because you don't know where you'll be in months or years time, relationships break down, we're one of very few medical families I know who are having children and it's only because we've stopped trying to fight the system and delayed careers and opportunities significantly to prioritise other things in life.

The thing is the need for these positions hasn't disappeared, they are just being filled by internationally trained doctors who have already reached registrar or consultant level abroad, but quality can be patchy. In the UK our standards are actually very high so there are plenty of countries like Canada, NZ and Australia who happily recruit from the UK where younger doctors could go and get training and experience. That's such a false economy because the UK gov has paid extensively for their medical school education even with the 9k fees being paid back.

There's also just not a lot of respect for people wanting quite basic things such as efficient HR, on time and accurate pay, being able to take holiday entitlement even if you give months of notice - the message is always, you're a doctor, you're well paid and can put up with it.

These are the things the BMA is pushing for and was promised after the last round of strikes, the reality is the government have back tracked on their promises and are now painting a picture of doctors just wanting more, more, more when actually pay restoration, exam fees and training position was all supposed to be agreed last time.

Honestly, I'm surprised people aren't more angry. The quality of care you're receiving if you go to hospital now is getting steadily worse year on year as we export our best talent and import the cheapest.

They’re going abroad as they are unsuccessful at interview though. Other drs are filling their places.

Its not something I agree with but until the BMA drop their ridiculous pay demands nothing will change on the job availability front.

I support the resident doctors.
I think it's a mistake for the BMA to focus on pay instead of all the other issues though.
Those who think all doctors end up on high salaries as consultants are mistaken. It used to be the case that you did the foundation and then picked your preferred speciality to train in. Not any more because most can't get a training place.

These are the brightest and best, trained at high cost to themselves and the taxpayer and should be an investment in the future NHS. Those residents should be the consultants of the future, instead they are leaving the UK or leaving medicine. What a shocking waste.

My son was successful at interview but is going to Aus anyway.

You say conditions are terrible for Resident doctors now. Wouldn't it be sensible to address the conditions rather than pay? I think most people would understand the need to address accomodation, training posts etc. I could get behind that - but calling for such a huge pay increase is a difficult sell to the public.

What conditions are terrible?

HR across the NHS is poor for all staff and needs a massive shake up
Having a locker to put your belongings in - should be a basic need

Giving notice for annual and study leave is 6 weeks and may be refused if other people have got in there before you - standard T&Cs for everyone

Paying for post graduate exams - investment in your future why should the tax man pay?

Moving hospitals is necessary to train properly - and gain experience, the majority are commutable from one location within a region ( not all) We all know this when we started.

But they haven’t had inflationary pay rises. Like the rest of the NHS they’ve had 14 years of pay cuts. NHS has eroded worse than in the private sector and doctors have done worst out of the NHS staff.

At some point this was always going to happen because it does every time pay gets eroded that much. I’ve got a feeling that Streeting may have talked about moving towards pay restoration in the initial strikes and then doctors almost immediately ended up with a below inflation payrise again. And I’m not sure the 28% is true. You have to play with the numbers a bit to get there.

Are they not on strike because they want inflationary payrises? Appreciate the news isn’t always accurate!

One point that's been confusing me: if there's huge competition for resident doctor jobs, including from (presumably) qualified candidates from overseas, wouldn't the obvious solution to this be for us to train fewer medicine students? Each student costs the taxpayer a fair amount to train (£4Bn in total apparently!). Why not instead recruit more doctors trained at other countries' expense, if they want to work here.and are competent? This is the opposite of the issue mentioned above, where UK-trained doctors move abroad...

There's no training posts. And no jobs. You cannot expect to keep talent when there are terrible working conditions, low pay, no trainers and no equipment. We are exporting our best staff and importing cheaper staff who are not as good.
I get so fed up of the NHS bashing threads on here. Oh well you waste money - what money? There's no bloody money to waste!

I think so. Because this years was another real terms pay cut. I don’t think they are ever going to get full pay restoration although it’s a good starting point for discussion.

I do think that nhs pay has been eroded so badly that increasing pay in line with inflation is the minimum that should be happening.

Is there a job out there thay matches inflation year on year? (Probs MP’s come to think of it) But I don’t think in the real world it exists!

The BMA were saying because of the Iran war they want more ! Well is the whole country going to get more? It just shows how ridiculous their stance is. They should accept the pay offer on the table and negotiate hard on the conditions. I’d have sympathy for that. Especially the training places. But if the strike costs billions where is the money going to come from to pay for the improved training and conditions? The money doesn’t just suddenly appear, nd this year not just the doctors strike is a problem but also defence, energy, etc. Soon the teachers and nurses will be wanting their pay rises. You keep saying you support their strike for pay, but you don’t say what the government should cut instead.
Jack Fletcher of the BMA said you can’t repair potholes when the doctors are leaving, like they deserve every penny the govt has. How will ambulances run, food deliveries happen, and the drs get to work if the roads are even worse than they are now?
cloud cuckoo land!

As I understand it, the costs to train each medical student isn't ear marked for them individually. It goes into an education pot or similar which the the university and NHS trust gets and can be used for education related activities at the Trust, not necessarily for that undergraduate so the narrative that each medical graduate costs so much to train is not entirely correct.

My issue with rapidly expanding medical school places without a thought to training capacity is how adequately are medical students being trained when there is only a limited training capacity at each Trust which is ever diminishing as consultants and senior doctors are busy training resident doctors, physician associates, new overseas doctors who have never worked in the NHS, etc. The thing is without more consultants and speciality training posts for resident doctors, there is no pathway for the increasing number of graduating doctors. This really needs to be fixed urgently in the interests of patients given one day these consultants and senior doctors will retire.

It's not just some UK medical graduates who are leaving by the way. Many overseas doctors who come here initially, also leave as pay, working conditions in the US, Australia, etc are much better. They leave usually after finishing their speciality training as they can with their UK qualifications then access better opportunities at higher pay so it's not an answer just to keep bringing more overseas doctors in. Even overseas doctors ultimately want the same thing. Better pay, opportunities and working conditions. The best overseas medical graduates don't even bother coming here anymore unlike decades ago.

I am a nurse and if they get 28%, I want it too. I don’t support them. But I do feel sorry for those struggling to get jobs. One of our doctors was saying that come august, her and her partner may be unemployed. Although I have to say that having more consultants around has made things more efficient! Although there is an enormous pole of discharge letters waiting to be done.

But if you started on that pay - and it barely changed in a decade you woud feel totally undermined and would either strike or leave

there are terrible working conditions, low pay, no trainers and no equipment.

please what terrible working conditions - ]i know they do not like working nights and weekends but medicine is not a 9-5 job.
the pay is not low - see the current breakdowns
no equipment - there are no shortage of patients ?

What was the pay rise % this year then if it was a pay cut?