Junior doctors strike

[big ears]

As an NHS employee myself, I would of course be very happy to accept more money if it were offered.

My lack of sympathy for the medical trainees' strike is informed by the following thinking - on which I'd be pleased to have comments if it's thought flawed.

The salaries of doctors in training AFAIK range from £29,000 to £58,000 depending on experience.
While they're in these jobs, they are being paid to train at public expense to qualify for hospital jobs which are paid to the extent that those in them have complained publicly and bitterly about the unfairness of their having to pay tax when their lifetime pension-contributions have exceeded £1,000,000.

If they decide for general practice, their salaries will be between £60-100,000 - or, if partners potentially a good deal more depending on their, or their managers', business acumen.
In either case, they will have excellent opportunites for additional private work, part-time working and flexibility, as well as a more-or-less complete assurance of job security.

The comparison of a medical trainee's salary with that of a nurse in charge, say, of a ward of 20-30 acutely-ill patients makes me wonder how quite how reward and responsibility are linked in the NHS medical vs. AFC (i.e. the non-medical/dental) payscales.

Do you also not support the view that to retain the best people you need to pay them a decent salary?

This mantra is so often said of the private sector wages and salaries yet forgotten about when it comes to public sector workers.

Don’t forget also that most doctors and nurses paid £9k a year tuition fees and have a student debt that will amount to an extra 9% income tax for most of their working lives. You quote salaries but once over £22k they pay 29% tax and once over £50k they pay 49% tax once you add in student loan payments.

Comparable public sector wage growth and private sector growth do not match. The Junior doctors are only asking for parity.

 

[Beretta V]

I don’t doubt what the nhs do. They have helped my friends and family loads.

I definitely agree that the nurses etc should have better pay.

I do feel that the country needs to get its **** together.
We’re spending billions not looking after the people who pay in but people who arrive on boats! They get better treatment than us who pay into the system.

If I need to see a GP it’s a joke here. It’s wrong. They won’t talk to you, everything has to be done on the ask my gp app.

My mum has had some issues going on around a year. Not getting anywhere she went to the actual doctors to hopefully speak with someone to be told it has to go through the app.
In all this time she hasn’t actually been able to see a doctor.

She had an outburst explaining that maybe if she arrived on a boat, claimed benefits she might be helped!
On her way home which is a 5 minute walk she was called and actually given an appointment for 2 hours later!

Bit of a rant I know but what I’m getting at is if the government got things sorted there would be plenty of money here for the NHS staff

 

[willie_gunn]

Trouble is that that argument stands up if the job remains the same.

The chronic shortage of workers across the whole sector leads to rota gaps that the nurses and doctors fill without extra pay.
Burn out is a real factor.

The pension is not as good as it was. I have just retired and have been awarded 37% of what they said I would get when I started in 1988!

All these factors are not realised.

As I said in an earlier post, the NHS as a model of healthcare is broken. No amount of money pumped into it will make it better.

As Nigel Lawson, who died this week, famously put it, the NHS is 'the closest thing the English have to a religion'.

As with so many religions, many of its staunchest followers are wilfully blind to its faults.

 

[Dalua]

The Junior doctors are only asking for parity.

No they're not - they're actually going on strike.
It seems to me that this conduct might be excusable in starving, oppressed factory-workers: but perhaps rather less-so in members of one of the UK's best-organised and most-privileged professions in publicly-funded training for jobs whose combination of pay, job-security and pension is unsurpassable.

The public/private comparison is spurious. My private-sector pals are very clear that, as a lifelong NHS-employee, I am as a babe unborn when it comes to what work's expected for the money in the real world.
In a similar way, medical staff seem fairly wet behind the ears when it comes to the experience of being a non-medico in the NHS.

Do you also not support the view that to retain the best people you need to pay them a decent salary?

The question seems more one of what is meant by 'decent' in this context.

 

[Scotty99]

I worked in the private sector of the IT industry for all my 42 years in work. If I wasn’t being paid enough, I went and got my self a better paying job. That is how you beat inflation.

 

[big ears]

As I said in an earlier post, the NHS as a model of healthcare is broken. No amount of money pumped into it will make it better.

As Nigel Lawson, who died this week, famously put it, the NHS is 'the closest thing the English have to a religion'.

As with so many religions, many of its staunchest followers are wilfully blind to its faults.

Trust me I’m not blinded to its faults. For the last years of my career I tried to make changes but the inertia was too much.

Part of the issue, in my view the biggest, is the politicians making promises to the public that cannot be met. Then putting pressure on the service to hit these targets. The effect is that the only way to hit them is to run an inefficient expensive service to top up the existing service. This then increases debt within the organisation.

Breaking the NHS up into individual trusts which compete against each other did nothing but create a turf warfare and the patients suffered. (Maggie Ts legacy )
We need to think of reinstating a regional policy where groups of hospitals work together and provide selected services well not all services poorly. Yes we would have to travel for the care but it would be better than what we have now.

I do think there needs to be radical change within how we deliver healthcare. Privatisation is not the answer but a degree of rationing of what can be done on the NHS within the 18 week pathway perhaps is.

 

[big ears]

I worked in the private sector of the IT industry for all my 42 years in work. If I wasn’t being paid enough, I went and got my self a better paying job. That is how you beat inflation.

Difference between private and public sector in a nutshell.

There are no other jobs to move to unless you quit and change career in the NHS.

This is why the strike exists to try and increase retention if staff and stop the drain.

 

[big ears]

No they're not - they're actually going on strike.
It seems to me that this conduct might be excusable in starving, oppressed factory-workers: but perhaps rather less-so in members of one of the UK's best-organised and most-privileged professions in publicly-funded training for jobs whose combination of pay, job-security and pension is unsurpassable.

The public/private comparison is spurious. My private-sector pals are very clear that, as a lifelong NHS-employee, I am as a babe unborn when it comes to what work's expected for the money in the real world.
In a similar way, medical staff seem fairly wet behind the ears when it comes to the experience of being a non-medico in the NHS.


The question seems more one of what is meant by 'decent' in this context.

Agree that negotiations should be about what is a decent salary however the junior docs started this discussion nearly a year ago asking for pay to be returned to where it was a few years ago taking cost of living changes into consideration. This in itself is not a bad ask.
Public sector wage growth has outstripped private sector growth for many years AND job opportunities are greater if a move was wanted. There has been for many years a job freeze based on lack of funding within the NHS so people are stuck at a pay grade and cannot rise above that.
What the public do have us job security which is not to be sniffed at.
We are happy to pay bonuses to CEO of multinational companies, fund city based pay rises way above inflation but when it comes to paying public sector workers the rate of inflation wage rises it falls flat.

Ask your self why have Nurses, Ambulance workers, physios and now junior doctors taken industrial action. This is a service in crisis that this government is not willing to support.

 

[Bowland blades]

Firstly , I hate Unions ! The junior Doctors though have a very valid dispute the pay and hours are terrible and there is basically nothing to stop them leaving the UK very soon into their careers for way better packages elsewhere in the world and that is what the best ones will do as soon as possible in their careers.
The debt a UK Junior doctor carries is ridiculous and its basically impossible to get through to their stage without a heck of a lot from parents. The joys of Slave labour and paying their own travel and expenses for a few year during training is carried with them

 

[Bowland blades]

Trouble is that that argument stands up if the job remains the same.

The chronic shortage of workers across the whole sector leads to rota gaps that the nurses and doctors fill without extra pay.
Burn out is a real factor.

The pension is not as good as it was. I have just retired and have been awarded 37% of what they said I would get when I started in 1988!

All these factors are not realised.

Well you retired far younger than most could by a long way BTW me and the wife are younger and no place near retiring

 

[The Singing Stalker]

I suppose the conspiracy theorists would think that perhaps, just perhaps, this is a deliberate ploy by the government to get rid of the NHS. Wasn’t there a thing a number of years ago where the government talked about bring in an American style model where you need insurance to be treated by private hospitals so they could get rid of of the NHS altogether. People kicked off about it so it went very quiet.
Now, imagine, in order to reinvent the wheel you run the current model down and then come up with a solution, like, oh, private insurance and a private hospital. It would take years, but finally you could reduce the whole cost of running the thing.

But I would never believe that myself of course.

 

[Rasputin]

No support from me I’m afraid!

Same here let’s be honest most trainee jobs have crap starting pay but their pay can scale significantly and above all else they can literally move anywhere on the world, go work on private medicine, join big corporates amongst other things. Hardly a destitute future bereft of opportunities in store for them is it!!!

That’s before you way up the pension pots, student finance, job security etc

 

[Dazb1967]

When I was young and left school I worked in a job I always wanted to do which was a repairing machinery as a mechanic, Anyway once there and clocking in and out every day and working shifts I absolutely hated it so I quit and moved on, If these junior doctors are not happy why don't they change careers now whilst they are still young and find something they will be happy with, My wife works in care and the s**t she has had to put with over the covid years was unbelievable and often came home in tears, Anyway I told her the same I would tell these junior doctors and that was change career but she loves what she does and takes the rough with the smooth, She also has to work weekends and bank holidays and doesn't get extra pay.
I totally agree they need more money but they know what money they will be getting when they enrol and they know they will be working shifts and If they can go and get more money stacking shelves then go and do it

 

[Dave_45]

Firstly , I hate Unions ! The junior Doctors though have a very valid dispute the pay and hours are terrible and there is basically nothing to stop them leaving the UK very soon into their careers for way better packages elsewhere in the world and that is what the best ones will do as soon as possible in their careers.
The debt a UK Junior doctor carries is ridiculous and its basically impossible to get through to their stage without a heck of a lot from parents. The joys of Slave labour and paying their own travel and expenses for a few year during training is carried with them

Why would you hate unions ?
Holiday pay, sick pay and better working conditions have came to be through unions.

 

[big ears]

Well you retired far younger than most could by a long way BTW me and the wife are younger and no place near retiring

I retired because I got cancer. Not out of choice.

 

[Dalua]

There are no other jobs to move to unless you quit and change career in the NHS.

This is why the strike exists to try and increase retention if staff and stop the drain.

Just to make it clear, the people who are striking are trainees drawing a salary while on a publicly-funded training-scheme.

If there are no jobs outside the NHS offering that degree of medical training with salary, I expect there's a good reason for that: probably that it is extremely inconvenient and time-consuming to run a service as well as making that offer.

 

[Tubby10]

Just to make it clear, the people who are striking are trainees drawing a salary while on a publicly-funded training-scheme.

If there are no jobs outside the NHS offering that degree of medical training with salary, I expect there's a good reason for that: probably that it is extremely inconvenient and time-consuming to run a service as well as making that offer.

If they're truly just trainees then the service should have no issue continuing without them.

The nomenclature of "trainee" is tricky as these are individuals that are in "training" for very protracted periods of time, often more than ten years with multiple higher degrees and huge amounts of debt associated with the mandatory exams and courses that are most certainly not funded.

The nhs is a monopoly employer and certainly not a good one. However there does seem to be a very militant approach to these strikes and it doesn't seem to be doing anyone any favours.

 

[Dazb1967]

Just to make it clear, the people who are striking are trainees drawing a salary while on a publicly-funded training-scheme.

If there are no jobs outside the NHS offering that degree of medical training with salary, I expect there's a good reason for that: probably that it is extremely inconvenient and time-consuming to run a service as well as making that offer.

I have recently tried to book a private appointment with a doctor to speed the process up for getting back to work, It was going to cost me £295 for a telephone consultation which I didn't have a problem with but didn't proceed as there was only a couple weeks difference between NHS and Private so wasn't speeding up at all as the doctor even privately is booked for months in advance and my appointment is not until the end of June, Anyway the private doctor I would be having the consultation with is the same NHS doctor who I have the appointment with in June, He works 2 days a week after hours carrying out private care, Tuesday and Friday
So when these junior Doctors come out of their training or basically apprenticeship it appears there is a good amount of money to be made in private sector alongside side their roll as NHS doctors.

 

[big ears]

Just to make it clear, the people who are striking are trainees drawing a salary while on a publicly-funded training-scheme.

If there are no jobs outside the NHS offering that degree of medical training with salary, I expect there's a good reason for that: probably that it is extremely inconvenient and time-consuming to run a service as well as making that offer.

No.
They are junior doctors. Some are in training posts others service based posts. Not all are trainees.

In ALL cases there is a proportion of service commitment in there roles. Most of this is the out if hours and weekends work.
This service is paid for by the individual trusts as it is a good deal cheaper than buying in locums or agency work. An average F2 is paid £14/hr however locum costs are in the region if £45/hr.

As part of their training time, which is paid for by Health Education England, they see patients in clinic and perform operations. Which whilst under the umbrella of training is a service commitment.

They are not supernumerary to the requirements of the department and perform many of the jobs that keeps the NHS ticking over. Without Junior doctors there would much less activity in the NHS. Consultant time would be taken away from seeing patients and more involved in providing emergency cover. I cannot tell you the exact loss of activity due to the last series of strikes but it was not small. I know if operations cancelled and clinics postponed because of the strikes. What this shows is they are being paid primarily for work done.

 

[Bowland blades]

I retired because I got cancer. Not out of choice.