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?

You are correct orange. Of course.
I just believe in the NHS and democracy, and there is little evidence of the later in the UK nowadays.

Chicken dude - are you sure you're dd will do 12 hours unpaid to our own to fill in the gap ?
That doesn't sound right at all

12 hours unpaid tomorrow that should say

I support the junior doctors.

WhoTheFuckIsSimon Mon 25-Apr-16 20:36:57

so.... you cant find enough doctors because of all the "early retirement".that you complain about.

Obviously that means pensions.are too generous in the NHS and particularly early retirement arrangements, and particularly for doctors.

(Though note that some nurses e.g. some band 8 nurses can still retire at 55 with net present value of pension income greater than £ 1.2 million - then they can come back working as well as drawing their full pension so long as they do so on an ostensibly non-NHS contract)

Large numbers of doctors only willing to work part time is caused by salaries being pitched non -optimally high from society's point of view.

Early retirement and part time workers are a waste of all the training that society has funded.

So we need many more trainee doctors, and a large salary / pensions cut phased in over a reasonably short time.

Problem solved.

oh yes... it should be a hate crime (or at least a serious NHS disciplinary offence) for any member of the NHS staff to refer to any patient as a "bed-blocker".

Anyone would think that the NHS produces outcomes commensurate with the fantastic financiial rewards that the doctors seem to feel a sense of entitlement to.
The NHS outcomesfor various illnesses compare POORLY with e.g. FRANCE

Cuba is a poor country with dedicated and effective doctors who are not anaesthetised by their love of money.

As far as I understand, junior doctors can't supplement their income through locum or private work so are they forgoing pay while on strike? How will they make ends meet if they go on indefinite strike which is what is being mooted?
Is the BMA paying full strike pay?

Does anyone know if there are any junior docs planning to be at Downing Street tomorrow, I have a bit of spare time and would like to show my support.

Totally in support here, they train for years, end up with massive student loans to repay, work lots of unsociable hours and have the responsibility of people's lives in their hands.

It's fucking laughable that gov wants their unsociable hours to now start at 10pm when them cretins in paliment start unsociable hours if they are still in the commons from 7pm!! Disgraceful.

Lanchester you can't seriously be holding up Cuba as the model society?! You want to be a communist?

Junior doctors can do locum work - often additional shifts here and there to cover sickness or gaps in the rota. But they can NOT do locum work whilst striking and are forgoing pay whilst not at work. If they go on infinte strike they will not be paid, nor will they be able to supplement their income.

Those of us working additional clinical shifts (ie working a 12 hour shift on the ward instead of a 6 hour clinic, working in A&E during hours allocated to do paperwork/plan teaching sessions and so on, or even coming on on a day off to help out) are not getting paid any extra to do this. All the paperwork and letters and clinics will still need doing so the consultants will then have to stay on in their own time to do the paperwork, work extra clinics or see more patients in their existing clinics.

This isn't about money. If the health service was privatised we would earn more. It we wanted more money we'd be backing Hunt in his bid to destroy the NHS...

mountain I would assume that, like any other public sector employers, they will lose their pay for any shift they strike on. I can't imagine the BMA has a strike fund to cover full pay. It's been a long time since unions could do that and usually only hardship cases are considered.

Actually Lanchester the Drs I know who have "retired early" are either retiring because their spouse is still working and supporting them prior to them taking their pension or they have moved into work in another field. Although one GP I know said he was taking his pension the day he was allowed to whereas if you'd asked him five years ago he would have said he would have carried on as he loves his job so much.....so I guess technically that's not early retirement but I doubt he's the only one getting out as fast as he can when a short while ago this maybe wasn't so common.

I jokingly say that I'm retiring at 50yo.....I won't be taking my pension then but that is definetly my plan. I don't get my nhs pension till I'm 67yo so I may choose to work in something totally unrelated to the nhs for a few years. Thankfully I have a much more generous private pension that I can get at 55yo from a previous job.

If you really think that salary cutting will solve the nhs recruitment crisis you're very, very silly.

I fully support the junior drs.

Shame on you Hunt.

This is a very serious topic but I am hooting with laughter at some posts

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/pregnant-women-and-cancer-patients-hit-by-first-ever-all-out-str/

NHS England believe that there is nothing that can be done to prevent doctors carrying out private work during this strike and any others.

I don't agree with withdrawing emergency care and paediatric services. It's totally counter-intuitive to argue that the contract is going to make the NHS more unsafe but then do it yourself in protest. All of the 3 consultants I know believe that the cover that is arranged is sub-optimal.

Finally, and I'm not being facetious, if pay is not an issue, I'd like to know why an increase was part of the negotiations?.

what recruitment crisis? hollow laugh The same recruitment crisis that has seen about half our medical graduates choosing not to train in England any longer 2 years post graduation? That's last year. Before all this kicked off. What do you think the numbers will be like this year?

These are specialist training posts that were like gold dust 5-10 years ago. We now have more empty posts than applicants in some specialties.

I support the strike. I was shocked to read how little consideration has been given to staff with caring commitments - where the hell do you find childcare that goes up to 10pm, even if was acceptable for your kids' welfare or not detrimental to family life? The new contract certainly hasn't been equality impact assessed! Or perhaps that's the way the Tories want it - there are now more women starting medical degrees than men. This is one way of making it a far less attractive career for women....

We don't need an increase. Just pay for unsocial hours appropriately so that I can afford childcare and my colleagues in A&E don't end up worse off than my colleagues in Dermatology. Increasing basic by a bit but decimating out of hours pay will worsen recruitment in acute specialties. That's A&E, Maternity, Paediatrics etc.

The pay issue is complex but Hunt keeps bleating on about increasing basic pay without qualifying that the take home pay will be a lot less because he is reclassifying what counts as unsocial hours.

We can't work anymore weekends than we do now. We are a two doctor family and we only get two weekends a month together at best. I don't get days off in the week when I work a weekend so that's 12 days straight. My children need me too and my patients deserve to have doctors that aren't burned out and perpetually exhausted.

We are not asking for a pay increase. the new contract will mean a pay cut for people working in specialities which already have a huge out of hours component, like my job, where I work more antisocial than sociable hours.

For 2 months over winter I didn't work a single day shift, they were all night or twilight shifts. I get the same paycheck every month regardless of what shifts I've worked, it just averages out.

He junior doctors have my full support. The work they do is vital to our NHS service and to put the changes in place that are part of the new contract would be dangerous and counterproductive. The only purpose of the contract in my mind is to ensure that doctors leave the profession and the dissolution of the NHS can begin in earnest. I would be on local picket line tomorrow but I have course on autism to go to, family has to take priority. Go junior doctors, stand up for your rights over they will then start on the next, nurses most likely #notsafenotfair #SaveOurNHS

The BMA have said that the sticking point was the Saturday weighting. If that had been resolved, they would have agreed the contract (somewhat throwing their female members under the bus - although they way still be intending to seek judicial review, it's not 100% clear). Therefore, this current strike is about pay. That's not my opinion - it's the facts of the matter per the BMA.

I have sympathy re: the weekend working. My DH is a dentist and works 3 Sunday's a week at an emergency access centre as well as his usual 5 days at the practice. From the beginning of November til the end of March, he worked 7 days a week as he took on extra UDAs due to a local dentist dying unexpectedly. It's crap - we have a 2 and a 3 year old and a baby born at the end of November. I'm cross with the LAT and the way they handled the death. But I do not think that taking action which knowingly could harm patients is the way to resolve that.

Yes the potential disparity between specialities is a major concern, especially when it's already so hard to attract Drs to those specialities.

gobbilino that's not what the chair of the BMA said the other day in a letter to Hunt.

Jeremy

I write in response to your letter of 23 April. As you know, we have been pushing for further talks on the junior doctor contract ever since your announcement of imposition in February. While we remain committed to reaching a negotiated settlement, this cannot take place with the threat of imposition hanging over our junior doctors’ heads. They have consistently made clear that this would be unacceptable, hence our clear offer to you last week.

I am now repeating this offer as a way to break the current impasse: if you agree to lift imposition while talks resume, we will immediately call off the industrial action planned for 26th and 27th April.

For the sake of clarity, we must, once again, reject your assertion that the only outstanding issue in dispute relates to Saturday pay. Your own letter recognises a number of critical issues concerning work-life balance, excessive working hours, improvements in training and crucially, workforce and funding implications for seven day services. The proposed contract is deficient in failing to address these issues properly, hence our concerns for patient care, the long-term future of the NHS and the recruitment and retention of doctors.

We can, I know, both agree on the pressing need to end this damaging dispute and get on with the work of putting in place a contract that ensures safe, high-quality patient care and addresses the many challenges faced by the NHS.

I hope that even at this stage we can find a way to step back from this dispute, from the imposition of a distrusted contract, and from the consequent industrial action.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Mark Porter
Council chair, British Medical Association

My brother is a junior doctor and doesn't support withdrawing emergency cover because he thinks it conflicts with his promise to "do no harm". However, he is seriously considering leaving medicine and the NHS because he doesn't think it is currently safe for patients, and if Hunt gets his way, it will be a whole lot worse.

I do support the junior doctors. Next it's the consultant contract and then nurses. They have to stand firm or we won't have an NHS left soon.