Junior doctors contracts-please read

[Limpetsmum]

In my mid 30s, mother of three and I'm a junior doctor.
I just wanted to raise awareness of why doctors are upset at the moment.
We already work many hours a week unpaid (out of good will because we care about our patients). The new contract in essence wants us to work even more but for less money. It's not 'cost neutral' - it's using the same pool of money to recruit more doctors and pay larger number of doctors within the same pool of money. This is resulting in up to a 30% pay cut for doctors.
Furthermore, finer detaIls of the contracts penalises part time workers and those taking maternity leave further.
A common misconception is that our union is not open to talks/negotiations. This is because the powers above will only talk if certain details such as the ones above are accepted ie only the smaller fine print is yet to be decided. Therefore our union has walked out of talks as the contract is being thrust upon us.
Doctors up and down the country are furious and concerned about patient safety as we're being forced to work unsafe hours. we are all concerned with what is going to come of the Nhs. If this is a step towards privatisation by alienating doctors we are the ones to gain in the long run financially as health care becomes private but we all believe in the Nhs and want to work in a safe, free and fair Nhs.
In addition, my own personal view is that I'm a mum of three. I want to see my kids and not have my normal week extended to include 7am-10pm mon-sat. I want to spend time with my kids and be there for my family as I'm there for my patients. I also have a life to fund and kids to support. I have a mortgage to pay and financial commitments.
Please understand why we are upset, why we are considering striking and if you support us, write to your local Mps to raise the issue.

This is not an official post in anyway but a plea for greater understanding from the wider public as I'm left feeling disheartened about my future and my family's future. Thank you for reading.

I would certainly be lobbying against this if I were a doctor I would be too but I think your prospects in life are a great deal better than many people in this country.

Can anyone tell us what junior doctors actually earn? Whatever the figure it doesn't justify the hours, but it would be helpful to know.
Popular understanding is that GPs earn £100k + so when I compare their lot ( an they also are protesting about conditions) against criminal defence solicitors who earn a pittance and are often in the police stations all night and still have to do a full court list I don't feel that sympathetic towards their particular cause.

Derxa - for me it's not just about drs prospects or salaries, it's about what happens to the NHS. This erosion of service only starts with drs salaries but will spread to other employees and already isn't just about how much they are paid but erosion of safeguards that protect patients from being treated by staff not in a fit state to treat them, imposition of a contract that will exacerbate an existing recruitment crisis in acute specialisms and will generally cause further damage to the NHS.

There are NHS doctor pay scales.

"Pay for doctors

This page outlines the pay for doctors from 1 April 2015.
Doctors in training

All doctors in training earn a basic salary and may be paid an additional supplement depending on their working pattern.

In the most junior hospital trainee post (Foundation Year 1) the basic starting salary is £22,636. This increases in Foundation Year 2 to £28,076. For a doctor in specialist training the basic salary is between £30,002 and £47,175.
Specialty doctors

Doctors in the specialty doctor grade earn a basic salary of between £37,176 and £69,325.
Consultants

Consultants can earn a basic salary of between £75,249 and £101,451 per year, dependent on years of seniority in the consultant grade. Local and national clinical excellence awards may be awarded subject to meeting the necessary criteria.
General practitioners

Many general practitioners (GPs) are self employed and hold contracts, either on their own or as part of a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The profit of GPs varies according to the services they provide for their patients and the way they choose to provide these services.

Salaried GPs have a salary range between £55,412 and £83,617. It is up to the employing organisation to decide how much to pay a Salaried GP within this range.

For more information about pay for doctors, visit the NHS Employers website."

Headof, why does your husband not have the same - cannot do a big job because your hours require you to be away on business etc? That is the interesting issue. I do business trips and all that and I am female.

On the basis of the above figures I am very concerned that those on the low pay figures early in their careers are working hours that are not commensurate with health and well being. I suppose there must be some specialities where the path to earning £101k is either not there or very difficult.

GPs seem to be very well paid in comparison and I wold have thought that some out of hours work should be included in those pay rates.

When GPs are quoted as earning £100k bear in mind that around 30% of their pay goes towards pension if they are partners (which they will be if they're earning that kind of figure). They have to pay their employers and employees contributions for their pension. The new pension deal hits them the hardest as they'll pay 'too much' into their pension and so will be taxed at 50% after they reach the limit.
I'm a hospital doctor and think the press have covered GP contracts in a better light than what it is - probably to cause disharmony. I'm married to a GP and he works really really hard. 12 hour days, works through lunch. He does on average 6 home visits a day as well as usual work. 10 years ago, you'd be lucky to do one home visit. The demands on them are huge and have gone up immensely.
We're digressing from junior doctor contracts which is what this post is about.
Yes we have earning potential, but we also have debt having been at Uni for 6 years + loss of earnings while we're at Uni. With £9k tuition fees junior doctors are going to come out of Uni with around £80k debt. This is not going to be an attractive job career for what usually attracts the top academically. Doctors are already leaving and 18 year olds won't want to go into this career. In all honesty, I wouldn't recommend this career to sixth formers now.

There are vast numbers of able sixth formers though around here who are still fighting for places at medical school so they have not so far been put off.

Well, I'm gobsmacked. How can anyone think this is a good idea? Of course doctors will leave if this is how they are treated. The NHS is being set up to collapse. Junior doctors have my full support. I will be writing to my MP.

I certainly wouldn't recommend medicine as a career now, and I do have doctor friends who say the same. I'd bet anything that naive 16 year olds don't have a clue about how shit a career in medicine really is. They will only think of the kudos and what the daily mail feeds them. Tbh I didn't know any of this as a non-doctor, so I think public awareness of the truth is not great. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I'm absolutely certain this is another way to make the NHS look unaffordable so they can sell it to their mates. I predicted something like this would happen back in 2010. DH is a hospital consultant and we were talking about the steps the govt would take to privatise the service. It's frightening to see that I was right.
When my DH was a junior dr he would work a 1:2 which could mean working from Friday morning until Monday evening every other week as well as being on call every other day. It was a ridiculous, dangerous way of working, for patients and drs alike. That was recognised and stopped as a result. It's completely immoral to go back to that. I was a nurse and we often had to question treatment junior drs were giving because they were too tired to make good decisions by Saturday nights. They would be covering four wards 24/7, so sleep was something of a memory to them.
I am very relieved that none of our DDs have wanted to follow their DF into medicine (or nursing) in this country.

I support you. For me it's not about how much someone earns (although it's a long slog to qualify as a doctor and huge responsibility once you are there) but about safety.

A very small example of this is after I had DS2. I had a 3rd degree tear with him and had some repair work done. A week later I had a fever and was bleeding red blood and so had to go back into hospital at about 9pm. I was not in a good place mentally and then the young doctor who came in needed to do an internal exam (checking for retained products?) and he couldn't stop yawning. I was genuinely terrified (was hormonal and sleep deprived)- he was about to use a large speculum where I had recently given birth and been stitched back together and he looked like he was barely awake. Now he could have been out on the razz the night before and come straight to work but I suspect that actually he was just working ridiculously long hours and was exhausted. Luckily this was a relatively minor procedure in the grand scheme of things but it could have been something much more serious.

Is there a petition online about this?

There are petitions around but writing to your local pm and voicing your concerns, spreading the word is the best thing you can do. We're trying our hardest as doctors to spread the message to get public on side but there's often a bit of resentment because we earn higher than average.
Put that aside - think about patient safety, think about further staff shortages as doctors leave the country and think who's going to be hit with pay cuts next. For a 7 day elective Nhs you need everyone working - porters, catering, secretaries. This can't go ahead - the Nhs will collapse and it's staff will be blamed for it's failing.
Thank you for your support.

www.change.org/p/british-medical-association-support-a-strike-for-junior-doctors?recruiter=346722044&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_page&utm_term=mob-xs-share_petition-custom_msg

Just to let everyone know we've moved this thread to Petitions as we don't allow posts asking Mumsnetters to sign petitions on our Talk Boards, no matter how worthwhile the petition is.

MNHQ

For some of us, the new contract will mean having to leave medicine altogether (unless we emigrate).

Like the OP, I am in my thirties with children. I work less than full time, although once my on-calls are factored in, my average weekly working hours come to 42 hours excluding the infamous unpaid overtime that all NHS staff donate to the system. I love my job and am passionate about it. However, the salary barely covers childcare and the costs associated with being a doctor. I draw the line at actually paying to work.

I am a pragmatist. DH is also a junior doctor but he is in a specialty that has a higher earning potential than mine, here and abroad. If one of us has to sacrifice our medical careers it will have to be me. Ten years post-graduation and a string of letters behind my name down the drain unless we move abroad where I can afford to work.

My situation is by no means unique should the contract in its current form become reality. For people like us, we won't have any choice but to strike if we want to carry on working (oh the irony...)

From the feminist point of view it woul be interesting to know why dancing's husband picked the career which would see him continue and earn more. Happens all the time and it's always the woman working part time not earning much. How did they each decide which speciality to pick? Are women not told which ones pay best?

grazia - in terms of my DHs specialty, there are few women in it because it particularly hard to progress in it if you take any time off in it to have a family, they also have particularly harsh rotas on family life (acute specialty) I only know of 4 female consultants in it - 2 don't have families (no partner or kids) and the other 2 have partners that don't work so support them on the family side.
When DH took this post we had to make a decision and we decided to change my career path (I'm now self employed) so that I could be flexible enough to support our family as it was impossible to both do the full on careers when his has such unsociable hours and is so inpredictable and inflexible. It was a sideways rather than backwards step for me and as we had to move for the job (contract specifies where you live in relation to the hospital) it was a good chance to make a change. His job didn't have the option of the flexibility that my career has although he did offer to not progress to consultant level and support me if I wanted to continue as a director in a bigger firm. We made the decision together, it was an emotional and practical decision.
A lot of the other consultants partners we know haven't the luxury of a profession that can do this and have given up work.
I think the acute specialties are particularly bad for unsociable Rota commitments and that's why a lot of them struggle to recruit women.