Junior doctor crisis, please read

[Jeepers]

Please have a look at this,

Doctors only get coverage in the media which is negative unfortunately.
Whilst the ridiculous pay rise of 1.9% for nurses etc was widely publicised as scandalous, the fact that GPs had a 0% payrise was not publicised at all, and this is on top of the fact that even though they have had a payrise, they have had their pensions capped in usch a way that it actually negates any improvement in pay this would have created, so the government has a public who believes that GPs are overpaid but actually are on much the same as before, but doing more work.
Still however not as scandalous as this training farce, there will be an awful lot of bad will over this, and thank God , am lucky enough to have a job but it does seem to be the way that things are going, ie with so much more uncertainty for the future.
I feel like protesting with the juniors, so will see you there Jeepers
The other scandel is the way that public finances via tax are going into privately funded concerns without any consultation of the public, effectively ransoming the NHS, the government and the public to at least 20 year plans of regular payments to buildings/institutions which are likely to be obsolete or no longer required in less time

That's silly. Having more experience in other areas is really helpful. My father as a psychiatrist over 40 years (he retired at 77 last year) so often picked up some general medical condition the GP hadn't spotted and he could never have done that without lots of practice in other areas before he specialised. It's very hard to get into medical school and a long time before you start to earn what your contemporaries in other fields earn if ever and years of exams. It's this application by computer thing that seems so wrong. I can understand trying to remove bias so someone can't see what colour an applicant is but to leave out other stuff that distinguishes one good candidate from another is very unfair. My father joined right near the start of the NHS.

Isn't there some cost rating per operation that is also meaning the NHS will never manage to balance its books - whereas before minor surgery could subsidise complex surgery, private clinics can now cherry pick the easy jobs and the NHS can't afford the difficult ones?

How can the government screw up everything it touches so bady??????

Best mate is about to graduate n become junior doc this summer, n she's just had notice that their pay packet is dropping by £5,000.00 which she has to explain to the people she's borrowed the money off to train in the 1st place......what labour have done to the NHS is riduculous.

At one point my brother was getting £1 per hour for each hour of overtime for some bizarre reason. The NHS is the 3rd biggest employer on this planet after the Red Army and the Indian Civil Service which I always find hard to believe given what a small country we are. Anyway they certainly seem to have got it wrong with this particular new system.

City sectors needing clever graduates should be going round those hospitals with recruitment forms this week luring doctors away

HR departments continually fiddle the hours monitoring system that juniors work. i.e. there are meant to be limits thaqt they work or else the doctor is paid more and the trust is fined. However if you fill your cards in correctly either the HR department harrasses you until you change it or they justr change the hours themselves (as doctors found out after they carefully photocopied their forms before filling in)

They have continually dropped the banding and thus wages(ie reward for additional hours worked) by changing shifts but increasing the amount of antisocial hours worked. Doctors are told in many trusts when they have to take their annual leave to make their job banding compliant. We work for approx £10/hour which is not bad on the face of it but when you add in antisocial hours/ weekends, additional unpaid work, large student loans, study, exams etc its not that great. currently the government has stopped financing flexible training for doctors so there is no possibility of part time work after having children.

But despite all of this people hyave continued to do this job and do it well, but I feel this new scheme is the last straw and people are so demoralised and feeling f**ked off its all starting to crumble

Jeepers, how old are your DCs

I just have one DD, 18m. Not sure how we would cope if we had another having to work full time

I didn't have mine until GP so my sympathies, it must be hard,working shifts, staying late etc particularly with the job security nightmare.
What about your DP? Is he in similar situation?

Hmmm no wonder so many of our docs emigrate is it

No thank god he is not in the medical profession, so at least one of us will have a job (touch wood)! He is away alot at the moment with work though so I have to say heres hoping 2007 gets better soon!

Its odd but I have spent alot of time recently thinking about different options available to me and its been quite liberating in a way. It would be gutting to leave medicine but sometimes I think it would be a relief, all that stuff/ stress/ constantly revolving mind etc you carry round with you, well lets just say I wouldn't miss it. All that extra time and possibilities it makes me feel a wee bit giddy!

My DH is locuming before committing to a substantial consultant post and I think he is getting really fed up with mental health services being constantly reduced and appallingly managed with really poor morale.He is a psychiatrist too. Currently I think he is trying to earn as much money as possible and then get out and do something else. Demoralising all around.
It seems better to halve the risks of 2 salaries being NHS dependent.
I hope your 2007 does get better

Jeepers - I work as a business manager in a Deanery, so right in the thick of it at the moment - coping with the impossible deadlines, upset trainees, angry consultants etc. I know it's not affecting me as directly as you and your colleagues but having just put in a 70+ hour week, I'm right with you...

DR, my brother moved with his family North because of the London house price problem and he took a decision to spend a lot of time with his babies and try to leave work on time which he is managing pretty well. He can only do that in his consultant post by only taking on one private case a month so his NHS income has to keep them all, buy a house if they ever find one, keep his wife and pay school fees. If I were him (I have different ambitions and never wanted to spend a lot more time with my children) I would have stayed in London and done as much private work as possible. He has other colleagues with tiny children who are also choosing to work 4 day weeks too and take pay cuts (these are men by the way, not women).

I had dinner with some people last year and one had changed from medicine and was now a barrister doing medical cases. He seemed very happy with his change. Someone else I know, an ex doctor, sells pharmaceuticals and makes lots of money. But if you really love medicine then people don't want to change. My father worked to 77 because he loved the work and was never remotely interested in money. It was the work he liked, the making people better, the psychiatry.

I have 3 children at university and they're all into the choosing careers stage (because I picked a career where I could afford to have babies in my early 20s unlike medicine - my brother's children are a generation behind mine) but none was tempted to do medicine even the one with science A levels although one of her friends is going it at Oxford and loves it. Hopefully they will have sorted out this mess by the time she's looking for jobs.

I do love medicine, but I think at a certain point , and I think my DH is at it, you also want to feel that all your skills, post graduate experience are being taken seriously(he is extremely good at what he does) ie by adequate financial re-numeration and also by working in services which produce good care for patients, and presently he is not getting either of these.
We are both making as much hay while the sun is shining and who knows what opportunities will present themselves in the next 5-10 years, particularly within the private sector.
General practice is still a fulfilling speciality for me at present and suits me, but who knows what will happen.Doctors have got to stick together to enure things don't get whittled down all around.
I think the public should be worried about where their NHS is going, because I don't think it is going to get better.

The other day I had to do an extra afternoon and actually paid my childminder more than I earned that afternoon (OK , I do have 3 children, which is only because my career went out of the window when I had my first one; as they said during the interview, I hadn't done very much in the last 6 months, no just had been on mat leave, had to go abroad for family problems etc, so wasn't commited enough to my career, so no job.).

We also moved from london 2 years ago, to make our money go further, medical salaries just can't compete with city or the big law firm salaries.
The good thing about medicine is that job is transferable thoughout the country and certainly we have both enjoyed the benefits that it has bought us. And private work is always available throughout the country

Low morale will just get lower imo. The HSJ this week ran an article on how people had really liked the NHS plan and felt that this current spate of so called reforms were a sell out of that vision. There was less and less support for private services and more depression amongst docs in particular.

I am a nurse and run my own business but my clients are almost always the NHS and it is so depressing. I really feel for doctors, they ahve had their training messed up for a while now but this is awful for junior docs.

Its not just happening with medical staff, the govt has been whittling away at all staff sadlaries with afc. The way we all have to work is extremely demoralising. Health care cannot be a business, and i am considering moving to the private sector , I used to be morally opposed to it,as i feel there will be little difference between the two. Most people i work with love their jobs but hate all of the bureaucracy now, there are more grey suited people than clinicians, some of my staff will not give out good will anymore as they are so fed up, and i dont blame them.

I may be wrong but I think the GPs got a good deal and the hospital doctors didn't. I don't know what my brother earns now but if he were a partner in a London law firm at 40 he could well have been on £400k if he were good enough na dmuch more as a banker. To see your contemporaries at Cambridge many of whom probably weren't as clever as you earn much more is hard if you also don't get the personal autonomy and feel like a pawn in the hands of others. If instead you had your own practice and chose when and where you contracted your hours then it's different. My father retired from the NHS at 63 which I think is the oldest you can in psychiatry and then worked just privately. I am sure he found that freedom from NHS managers and rules very liberating. By moving out of London my brother has moved from the people in the SE who can afford to pay private doctors, away from most of the other sources of potential private work (not all by any means) but it was ceratinly a lifestyle choice and he does get home in time to see his babies and his commute is much less and his life in general is better.

As an OT when I signed up for the course I did it knowing I'd never earn the same amount as my contemporaaries but I expected to get some things in return - the ability to improve the lives of my patients, job security, job satisfaction and a decent pension. These things have all disappeared now as I moved my pension to a teachers pension for an academic post and now going back to the NHS I have to sight the new T&Cs. I also expected to be paid enough whch I know is debateable but having had a pay rise this year that is only around half of inflation I'm not best pleased.

I, and DH who's also an OT, are seriously considering emigrating and many of the people we've trained with say the same thing. IMO the crisis has only just begun, the UK is going to lose the best of it's health care staff accross the board if it doesn't get it's act together.

liquidclocks - I'm coming with you!

OT in the community is so underfunded - we cant see half the people we need to and do half the interventions i would like to - all for shit money! I just love telling 94 yr old women that they cnat have a shower fitted by social services now they cant use their baths, and they must strip wash for the rest of their days.

The NHS is so much more than Drs and nurses - I wish people would think about the other professions that have to work in the most depressing circumstances

The NHS is about all health professionals, and they are mostly being shafted ,underpaid, with poor resources.It is also about the mangement structures as well, and the buildings. They are not in good shape either.
I think that statement covers it all really.
It is all widespread, and if it happens to one group, it is merely a matter of time before all get the same treatment.

All allied health professionals are in the same boat and frankly the amount that they are paid is scandalous. You are right that the NHS is about more than drs and nurses but I wonder who should be highlighting this?

ahps have been shafted for years, as patients dont understand our job roles etc.