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

Nope. Not what I said at all.

This government and previous seem to make a continual mess of trying to put together a cohesive plan in providing well trained and well paid medical staff. It is the bedrock of a flourishing society to provide excellent medical care. How they can make this so convoluted is totally beyond me. I do support the strikes but for better conditions not necessary the pay requests. The government withdrawing the training place elements off the negotiating table is absolute madness! I am utterly depressed with living in a country that cannot seem to get its shit together!

She was not going to join this strike until Mr Streeting took away the additional training posts.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all the media reports say that the extra 1000 training posts were withdrawn when the BMA refused the offer (without consulting its members) and chose to take strike action.

And that that rejection was based on pay restoration being done over 3 years instead of 2.

It does sound like your children's stress is not pay-related, in which case shouldn't the BMA be lobbying only for improved training instead?

Lots and lots. I have a social group mainly made up of young medical graduates. They are LIVID with the BMA for the constant griping about pay when they want jobs. UK jobs. They don’t want to go the NZ / Aus where the jobs are, endlessly applying for UK jobs while there in the hope of being able to return home, or going travelling for a bit in the hope that in the future when they return the UK jobs might have materialised. They don’t want to be working in a shop when 6 months ago they were operating on people. They want UK jobs. The UK government were going to guarantee more jobs for UK grads, but due to the sheer arrogance of the BMA the strike went ahead and the jobs were pulled.

This happened decades ago? I left school in 2008 and the very brightest in my sixth form went on to study: Maths, Physics, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Economics, many at Oxbridge or LSE. The only students who studied medicine/dentistry (and law, come to think of it) were from a cultural background that still really values these professions, and were barely in the top quartile in terms of academic achievements.

As was mentioned upthread, we know so much about what different professions pay now than we used to. With knowledge of what one can earn in Tech or Private Equity, why on earth would the brightest and most ambitious students choose medicine? I suspect this is also why fewer and fewer men are going to medical school, and women now outnumber men in medicine, as men typically place more importance on higher pay.

Edit to add: how do you expect pay to keep up? Those I know working in Private Equity were earning £250k+ before they were 30. Do you think the NHS should pay resident doctors £250k+?

But the strikes cost money. There is no magic money tree. If money keeps being spent on strikes there is none to spend on training. A lot of these problems were caused by the last government, it just takes a lot of time and money to sort out. They've already had massive pay rises.

Not in the UK they don't. Not any more, not since Leng.

I dont think it has to be one or the other and I think a wise government would improve conditions

1. To reduce support for the strike my daughter was going to work until the places were withdrawn.

1. To reduce waiting time partucularly in A and E.

1. To avoid expensive university trained young medics going to staff the service in other countries.

1. So we can all be treated by doctors who are not tired hungry or despondent.

1. Because its the right thing to do.

My daughter was unexpectedly unable to attend a family celebration. A patient had taken a turn for the worse and she was supporting him his wife and their two young children during what turned out to be a last visit.

It is such a rewarding but hard job.

Leng has been totally ignored and PAs are still on doctor rotas amd still being recruited as doctor replacements (at higher cost). Wes has not implemented one bit of her recommendations. Are we surprised ??

How do you define most talented.Different specialisms do it different ways. Anaesthetics A and E exams folowed by interview.

IMT points based on masters publications etc then interview. If you focus on just being a great doctor you cannot get in.

Whats wrong with that. She spent the last year supporting patients and families who are dying. Would you like to tell help a mother tell her little ones that?

NHS recruitment is a disaster anyway but PA posts have disappeared from my regional trusts. There are still a couple in post in my local hospital but the ones in GP services have gone, those posts are filled by advanced practice AHPs or nurses. There are no posts advertised within a 100mile radius of my postcode on NHS jobs. Lots of the (completely inadequate) PA training courses have been suspended/cancelled in light of Leng, so I wouldn't agree that it has been totally ignored.

Adjusted for inflation, junior doctors are paid 26% more now than when I was a junior, and they work half the number of hours. Foundation year doctors are currently paid on average £50k p.a.!

Taking a multidecadal view of pay - apart from a nine year window when doctors benefitted from the piles of money that the last Labour government flung at the NHS - a successful claim for an inflation adjusted return to previous levels of pay would save the rest of us a lot of money which could be better spent on services.

The BMA's selection of 2008 for pay "restoration" was conspicuously fishy from the start, because, quite apart from the Blair dividend, that was the last year that juniors worked longer hours. The EWTD was implemented the following year. I think most people now have cottoned on to the deceitfulness of the BMA campaign, but they probably underestimate their greed.

Says the person who hates resident doctors and thinks they should all have been to one of 5 Unis (that they have selected) or they are rubbish. Consultants who don't support and train their staff should be fired.

Good to hear it's happening in some places. Although I wonder if those AHP jobs used to be doctor jobs. And are the AHPs on the doctor rotas as some are acting as ST7s. You either need to go through rotational training, exams etc or you don't, and if you don't stop making doctors do it.

By all means reduce the discussion to the level of the school playground; I expect nothing more.

It doesn't alter the facts that are made in my post.

No but the demographics of resident doctors have changed. When I went to med school- most of us went there straight from school. There were only a handful of older students. Graduate med school courses hadn't started.

This meant that we qualified at age 23/24 and got through most of our rotational training before having kids. I had my first child as a final year registrar. Now many more people are entering med school later, and have children as F1 or F2. This makes rotating so much harder.

You were also almost guaranteed a house job in the area you trained. Most people stayed around so your PRHO year, was like an extension of med school but paid. There was also the option of free accommodation. The idea of being sent to a deanery across the country without friends or family is terrifying. You need that support to get through your first job.

I think this is why >90% of my cohort are still practising medics - despite working 48 hour shifts in the early days. It was hard but fun. We had a doctors mess. Other staff were generally kind to you on the ward. It feels like some AHPs and nurses are on a mission to trip up the resident doctors.

@HouseOfGoldandBones

Most medical graduates get a training post in their first choice location, for 2026 it will be 82.3%.

Historically, doctors' messes were always made up of graduates from all over the country, among them pre-reg house officers. Doctors typically changed location at each step of the career HO to SHO, SHO to reg, reg to research job, research job to SR.

Relocation is not new, and on-site hospital accommodation is still often available. In Wales it is provided free to all F1s (as a taxable benefit).

The main thing that has changed is junior doctors' propensity to complain.

Hospital accommodation is extortionate (where available). Most places do not have it any more.

Crikey hospital accommodation is long gone in our town! It all got sold off.

Well for some bizarre reason my two have noy come across it over the last fouf years. Do they have it in the Yorkshire or Merseyside region ?