Junior Doctors Strike

[Lanchester]

Do the Junior Doctors seriously think that they are still
respected for always putting the interest of their individual patient first?

Every single professional has had their training paid for through the tax payer one way or another. Most of them end up paying taxes themselves, thus paying towards the cost of training the next lot. We don't pay directly for the services of the NHS, which allows us to avail ourselves of the service when we need it regardless of how much or little we earn. So I get treatment for ms when I need it, not when I can pay for it (never, as it happens). Having earnt a lot in a former life, I helped to pay for what I get now, but didn't need then.

Lanchester, the more you post, the more convinced I am that you are sitting in Smith Square.

Lanchester
The more you post, the more your posts are becoming reminiscent of the episode of Alan Partridge demonising the farmers.
Nurses will falsify records? Really? Know that for a fact do you? All of them?
Absolutely ridiculous.

There are so many bizarre assertions in your post I don't know where to begin.

Part time working a waste of resources?
Generous parental leave?
Unnecessary travel and secondments?
Band 8 nurses retiring with million pound plus pension pots?

Not in the NHS I've worked for and alongside for 20 years

Lanchester you just would not have staff left working in the nhs if you did that.

A newly qualified nurse starts work at £21,600. That's after a three year degree. Pay rises over 7 or 8 years to £28,000.

The pace on a ward is relentless. 13 hour shifts with no break and too many patients to look after is common. Never mind factoring in nights and weekends, Christmas Day working. Shitty e Rosta taking over your life, no choice in shifts, or annual leave. Generally an unpleasant working environment as the bullying tends to be so endemic. Constant fear of investigations, blame culture, etc. Never mind the risk of being plastered in bodily fluids. It being mentally upsetting and stressful with people dying, some people being abusive, the feeling that you're never doing enough because the eight people you're looking after all need something doing now and you don't know who to go to first.

I know many people who have left saying they'd rather earn a couple of thousand less and do a basic admin job. Regular hours, breaks, no nights, no weekends, less stress, less shit.

The turnover of staff where I work is terrible. I know three people who have left in the last month as they just can't take it anymore, one to be a receptionist, one to be a TA, and one has just left without a job. That's a fairly standard drop out rate.

FeralBeryl Wed 27-Apr-16 18:12:31
you are misrepresenting what I posted
did I say all nurses falsify notes ? - No, obviously not!

WhoTheFuckIsSimon Wed 27-Apr-16 18:20:40

that does sound pretty shitty - but it also sounds like the system is inefficient

And the boost to pensions on health grounDs is exceedingly hard to get. I was talking to a senior manager about this recently and she said in 20 years she's known two people get it (she works in a large dept of about 160 staff so over thag period will have seen a lot of staff). One was terminally ill and the other had a serious head injury in an accident and lost their sight with no chance of it recovering.

Pension age has been raised to 67 and will rise in line with state pension age whenever thag goes up. That was done nearly a decade ago.

It is shitty, and I agree it probably is inefficient. But no one seems to be able to sort it. If someone like Branson could be parachuted in and sort things I would welcome him with open arms. It's not just where I work, it's everywhere.

WhoTheFuckIsSimon Wed 27-Apr-16 18:24:10

I am sure you know that the changes to the NHS pension scheme(s) still leave them as just about the most generous large membership schemes in the country.

For example there are STILL band 8 nurses on the 1993 scheme who will be able to retire at 55 with a net present value of expected pension receipts of in excess of £1.2 million, including a tax free lump sum of about £100,000 payable at age 55.
Those nurses can draw their full pension and return to work full or part time on a 'non-NHS contract' and still earn their work salary plus receive the full pension every month. (If they return on an NHS Contract the situation is somewhat different however.)

I know less about doctors remuneration, but apparently their pension arrangements are extremely favourable.
Certainly many doctors seem to feel it worth their while to retire early or cut down their hours to part time.

I am at the bottom of band 5, having returned to nursing after a break as a carer. I work 13.5 hours per shift with 1 hour break split across that time. Only 30 minutes is paid. I care for critically ill patients and monitor their condition moment by moment. I have to be able to assess the quality of their ventilation, interpret their blood gases, alert the doctor to deranged results and (depending on who the doctor is) advise the normal treatment given. I have to monitor their vital signs. Give drugs prescribed, first assessing if the drug is appropriate at this time given the patient's condition. I have to liaise with therapy staff and incorporate therapy into the patient's treatment cycle. Care for relatives and explain treatment. Turn the patient regularly to avoid pressure ulcers. Consider fluid balance, electrolyte replacement and counteracting the effects of any treatment on other systems. I have to engage in training courses. The list goes on and on. I currently get £4ph above the minimum wage. I think that's not extortionate.

But that is a pension scheme that stopped a long, long time ago. Obviously anyone who started on it will still have the majority of their pension protected though I believe that from this year anyone still working their pension is paid into the new career average rather than final salary scheme.

I shot myself in the foot when I joined the nhs from private industry. I left behind a final salary scheme available at 55 to go to a career average scheme available at 67. If I had looked into it like I should have done I would never have left. I could be retiring on a great pension in 15 years instead I have to work another 27 years for a much worse pension. I also had private healthcare and a subsidised gym. I wasn't a hot shot city type at all. Just an admin job in a Midlands town but I was earning the same as a newly qualified nurse and got to spend most of my day tossing it off on Mumsnet and going to the pub for lunch. Fuck knows why I left, probably my worst move ever.

rachelrcrossley - "In fact part of the despair we are currently feeling comes from the fact that we effectively have a monopoly employer."

Making it in effect impossible to legally work for anyone but the NHS forces you to work for whatever the Govt deems it will pay.

I agree this is in fact the underlying issue in the whole contract negotiation. Employees who are junior Drs right now are trapped in the profession with no bargaining power other than to strike or leave the profession completely.

As I said, way back up thread that in economic terms the NHS is a monopsony (i.e a monopoly buyer) and in fact the new contract is an abuse of that monopsony position. In the strict limits on Junior Drs offering their time outside the 48 hour week as higher paid locums is a further evidence of the abuse of a monopsony position.

In the end graduates will not choose to enter medicine and the NHS will be broken up by reducing the number of Drs to a point that patients are forced into the arms of private providers as many wealthy people and people with employers health insurance already do choose for routine elective treatment. I have made that choice a number of times myself as a patient.

I also wonder if Hunt isn't planning to effectively undermine junior Drs with the threat of bringing in foreign locums to break the strike and cut wage seven further.

Incidentally, the undermining of equality law by Govt is widespread.

It is being routinely seen as a 'luxury we can't afford' since the financial crisis by business and Govt is conniving in that. The burden of austerity is falling on women disproportionately.

Sheza. Thanks for your informative posts. It must be very hard feeling 'got at' on here.

The problem that you're up against is that many of us in the private sector haven't had a pay rise in years, almost a decade. DH actually had a pay cut 4 years ago and has not had a rise since. Our pensions have been decimated and are riskier in that they are not backed by the government.

For the general public, whose actual if not relative pay and conditions has been going down for years, it's hard to feel sympathy for those public sector employees for whom this has only just started.

Yes, nurses could strike, and maybe they should. They are angels without wings, and they get treated like crap. I have even seen my own colleagues disrespect them. If I see that, I remind them that a nurse can do their jobs without us, but we would be fucked without them. The nurse's union may do well to impose a strike; I think that might be the push this asshole government needs to improve things for them. If the nurses did strike, I would be behind them a million per cent. xx

Pot, kettle black? I don't THINK so. I didn't choose to take a week off - I was forced to, as the clinical manager knew I was approaching burn-out, as what happened to many doctors. Some didn't even return. There were time I thought it wasn't worth it, but then I remembered why I went into it in the first place, and that got me through the hard times. I am not stating a fact that nurses wouldn't strike; I am just saying that the ones I know wouldn't. I maybe should have worded it better. Anyways, thanks for wishing us well - both babba's and appreciate it. x

If nurses were to strike lives really would be at risk. The NHS nurse-doctor split is 70/30. In other words, doctors couldn't physically cover the workload of nurses if they were to strike (let alone know where anything was kept, how to prepare many of the drugs that are used, etc., etc.)

I find it hard enough not to respond to text messages asking me to do overtime, because I know that means the unit is busy and nursing staff are stretched, let alone the thought of striking.

Twowrongsdontmakearight, we appreciate that there are differences in the private sector, but there hasn't been a pay rise in the nhs for years either (although I admit there has been 1% every few years...), pay progression for those on agenda for change has largely been stopped as part of austerity measures.

With regard to pensions, its likely ours will change again in the next five to ten years, and will decrease in terms of value, as its an easy change for the government to do, just as we have gone to an a career average scheme. Our pay is all we get, and as a consultant I can claim back travel for work. We have no perks, no company cars, no other benefits.

We have been relatively protected in pay terms, but in terms of workload and physical and emotional burdens of our work, almost all those in caring (and some in non-direct patient roles) within the nhs have been doing lots of work (overtime in effect) for free. For juniors this doesn't include working for presentations, audit, studying for exams, quality improvement projects, coordinating rotas, the list of things done in ones own time is long, and also required to progress to the next year of training. This is on top of the hours for direct patient care that are contracted for, and our admin is often not factored in to junior doctors timetables.

I dont necessarily feel got at, I think it is perfectly normal for those outside our bubble to ask questions in order to try to understand what is going on, even if by the end you don't agree. Things have occasionally gotten personal, which I think is a shame, but I can also understand the heightened emotions involved on all sides.
And to be fair, juniors aren't asking for pay rise. They are asking for their working patterns to be recognised, and not to have a contract that makes them even more tired in terms of erratic hours, decreasing their abilities to not only do their jobs, but decreasing training opportunities, and therefore decreasing their experience and competency for the future when they are consultants.

And suggesting that part time working is penalised to make it less attractive is crazy. If that happened I would leave as would many others. So it would have the opposite effect to what you think.

And the reason I work part time? Because I'm too bloody burnt out to work full time. I see my full time colleagues crying some weeks because the e Rosta has allocated more then 60 hours worth of shifts in a week. Most of them long days of 13 hours, or maybe a mix of days and nights in the same week.

They're on their knees and it would kill me.

I reckon I can last a few more years now im part time but I know eventually I will fully burn out. And then I will find a NMW job and work five days a week and be a lot less stressed.

I think the other thing that may be being forgotten is that doctors have to move workplace every 6 months. Sometimes they get to know two placements at a time, so have to try to move somewhere that is commutable to both. Either way, they often have an hour or more commute. Given that their shift can be 8am-9pm (13 hours), then they end up staying an hour late (14 hours), then an hour's commute, then an hour's commute into work the next morning, they may get 8 hours at home between shifts. That's 8 hours to have a shower, eat, try to get to sleep, sleep, try to wake up, shower, dress and do any jobs like put on a wash load.

At least it should be possible for a Junior Doctors to get qualified if they come to Scotland....

There's more than one NHS in the UK!

Wales as well.

Don't bother with this thread..it was started by Lanchester who literally hates junior Drs and the NHS and derails every single thread on the subject.

Himalayanrock -this is absolutely why I havnt posted on this thread. I work in the NHS and the number of posts which have been so obviously completely goady ,from people who have an extremely jaundiced view of the medical profession for whatever chip they have on their shoulders is unbelievable.It means that discussion of real issues about how the government have completely mis-represented the evidence in order to achieve their aim of making the NHS in its current existence unsustainable are not viewed with any real scrutiny. The concerns of junior docs are clearly not understood and there is an absolute lack of subtlety in the arguments presented against them .
The views represented by people pertaining to be married to consultants may seem valid to them but in no way represent the reality of the job as I see it. (I am a consultant)
I have no energy to argue with people who are incapable of seeing an alternative prospective. We will see the truth of the matter in years to come when people realise what they have lost. I am actually not against a privatised health service which will bring better and more sustainable working conditions for doctors but I believe it will be a very difficult and expensive culture shock for patients.
I do believe that people in highly paid jobs in the private sector have very long working hours and extremely stressful situations to deal with but I am friendly with several people in this situation and their perks and working conditions are way better than mine and they universally have a better standard of living. I have a very decent income but am at least 10 years older than them.

Himalayanrock
I have skimmed through this thread and mind was boggled by the OP. Hater is the only logical conclusion.