[Closed] doctors on strike

Having worked in Aberdeen where the average salary for workers in the oil industry seems to be 80-100k looking at their porsches and bmw's, why does the fact that senior registrars who often act up as consultants at the end of their training can earn a maximum of £60-70000 seem to be paraded in the press as the definition of greedy doctors that somehow must be stamped out?! What social values does this signify about society and if the argument that the public sector can never expect to earn what the private sector does

Oh dear where to start, as there is so much wrong with this ranty paragraph. (1) the guys offshore are paid a premium as it is a dangerous environment
(2) plenty of O&G workers have significant responsibility with bad decisions that can result in many deaths
(3) Job security, North Sea O&G job losses are now into the thousands, since 2014, and the ones still in work are on longer shift patterns and/or less money. How does that compare to doctors in the NHS?
(4) So you think oil isn't important to UK society?

(4) So you think oil isn't important to UK society?

You think North sea oil is more important than a working NHS?

I think you are missing his point dragon.

As I read it, he ISN'T saying that O&G workers don't deserve that pay.

He is asking why no one seems to bat an eyelid at the pay packets in jobs like those, but doctors get regularly demonised as greedy for being paid quite a lot less than that.

@billyboy....following on ...I suggest a bet...question is ..who can the tories upset next?

We've had...fracking, working tax credit, disabled benefit cuts, human rights act, legal aid being cut, bedroom tax, royal mail shares being sold to city fat cats, environmental budget cuts making the floods worse and now doctors..this was just off the top of my head...what'll be next?

This is why Corbyn will never win...he listens to others way too much....

You think North sea oil is more important than a working NHS?

Not more important, but oil is integral to how we currently live as a society (plus tax revenues). And on a wider point energy supply is more important than the NHS.

doctors get regularly demonised as greedy for being paid quite a lot less than that.

Doctors aren't getting paid less once all benefits are taken into account, and it is allied to the fact that O&G workers are in a properly competitive private sector, so it up to companies to determine what they pay.

Doctors aren't getting paid less once all benefits are taken into account

balls !

its whataboutery though, are you a secret government spin doctor??

^^ like the one in that video trying desperately to silence awkward but entirely reasonable questions

Doctors aren't getting paid less once all benefits are taken into account

It's basic salary + banding.

http://www.bma.org.uk/support-at-work/pay-fees-allowances/pay-scales/juniors-pay-england

The maximum basic salary for a junior doctor is £47,175 - that's an experienced Speciality Registrar at the end of their training who is regularly acting up as a consultant.

I believe most of them are on a 1A or 2B banding (Band 1A: 40 and 48 hours per week on average, most antisocially; Band 2B: working between 48 and 56 hours per week on average, least antisocially) which means they get the 50% banding bringing their total salary to £70,763

Everyone is missing the point here including the 'must have the only opinion that's relevant' usual forum bully suspects, the fact is everyone in every walk of life other than the medical profession has had to endure years of hardship. Lots of people studied hard have huge debts and either their hoped for profession failed to materialise or they've had to accept some lower level occupation that will keep them in penury for many years.
My last company was a business to business supply operation dealing with 850 businesses across the British isles in 2008, by 2011 that figure was a fraction,150, after business after business folded. So it also is for myriads of jobs, Steelworkers, Miners, even bank workers at coal face level, lawyers, everyone has been touched by this, so why should the medical profession not pull in its belt? At least just for the jnr doctor period and perlease, less of the poor consultants, those figures? They're petty cash compared to the lucrative private practises that get run in parallel, oh and using NHS resources for all the unprofitable stuff, that also seems to be forgotten here, sorry nothing I've read here impresses me, nor will impress me one iota, so I think there is nothing for it but to fire up another of Captain Sensible or whatever his name is's flounce vehicles, another thread better off left to forum dogmatists..

Oh and one last point a visit to Cuba and the pay scale of the medics there compared to everyone else and the service they operate in return, would be high on my suggestion to everyone in the nhs.

erm.. okay bye then

Cuba? Surely you mean North Korea? I thought that was the only alternative to the Tory utopia?

isn't Cuba a failed state? So they might not be the best country to follow...

As for years of hardship, if you voted tory, you can hardly be surprised when they act like tories.

Cuba has health stats better than the US in many measures AIUI but that's another story.

Fun fact:

[url= http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/06/17/average-salary-in-cuba-rose-1-pct-last-year-to-20-month/ ]Average income in Cuba is $20 a month[/url]. [url= http://www.medicaldaily.com/cuban-doctors-get-salary-raises-67-month-after-government-cuts-100k-redundant-jobs-272310 ]Cuban doctors are paid $67 a month[/url]. That's x3.35 the national average.

[url= http://ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/2014-provisional-results/stb-ashe-statistical-bulletin-2014.html ]Average salary in the UK is £27,200 pa[/url].

£27,200 x 3.35 would be £91,120

usual forum bully suspects

I "bully" people by presenting facts with sources.
In other places this is called "debating".

Er GrahamS if it's any consolation I wasn't referring to you as a 'bully' and fully respect your argument and position even if it is misplaced by self interest obviously. Personally I have no axe to grind and to call me a Tory is offensive in extreme, my point if I have to make it again, Doctors Jnr or otherwise should not consider themselves isolated from the rest of us, which sadly they do, they have always considered themselves a cut above and in this dispute as against the last one which was more about impact on their private practise as I recall is, just about the money and for most of the rest of the world in real terms we have all suffered in that regard so continuing to strike is a mistake. That's it and I really don't want to hear about what they do or how many die at weekends more than weekdays, I'd rather they discussed it all at ACAS and sorted it out. I wonder how much the doc was being paid whilst he banged away on the internet forum was he at a Nurses Station interrupting their face book sessions? Or was it in the leisure time they claim never to have? Just saying.

GrahamS if it's any consolation I wasn't referring to you as a 'bully' and fully respect your argument and position even if it is misplaced by self interest obviously

Okay - fair enough - I retract my pouty lip 😀

Regarding..

so why should the medical profession not pull in its belt?

Maybe they should.

But if the government need to reduce pay then they need to say that is what they are doing and we can have a proper national debate about it.

Right now they are reducing pay, but then pretending it's an 11% rise and that the strike is because the greedy doctors want more money.

last one which was more about impact on their private practise

What private practise is that turn. Jnr Dr's don't have a private practise.

I'd rather they discussed it all at ACAS and sorted it out.

They tried that.

Doctors Jnr or otherwise should not consider themselves isolated from the rest of us, which sadly they do

just about the money

(1) the guys offshore are paid a premium as it is a dangerous environment-

(2) plenty of O&G workers have significant responsibility with bad decisions that can result in many deaths-

(3) Job security, North Sea O&G job losses are now into the thousands, since 2014, and the ones still in work are on longer shift patterns and/or less money. How does that compare to doctors in the NHS?

(4) So you think oil isn't important to UK society?[/quoteAre you trying to suggest a health service is not needed for the UK? I think we can all accept that a healthy population and one with oil [ as the economy remains oil based] is the preferred solution
Deciding which is the most important well health as technically we could live without oil easier than we could without a functioning heart or untreated diabetes.

And you had the never to call theirs a rant.
All these debates do is highlight the lack of sense in tories and the way they will use arguments they actually dont agree with to defend the indefensible

Oil workers more precious than Doctors...your moral compass is missing in the fog of your malaise.

 

Dalton seems impressed with the job that JH has done so far...
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/jeremy-hunt-criticised-over-junior-doctor-fiasco-by-his-own-chief-negotiator-a6812521.html

Lots more interesting arguments here. Firstly the job security theme is one that people hold on to as if that means people should always sacrifice adequate pay and working conditions as long as the industry they work in has a stable requirement for their labour across a population. Firstly I can tell you that as a mature student I beat odds of 33-1 to get a place at a medical school in the UK. That's just amongst the people who actually did apply. I failed to get a place the first year I applied and seriously though about quitting. Not sure why I didn't but thankfully I persevered.

I then went on to face 6 years of the hardest exams I will ever face, some I scraped through by the skin of my teeth. I was in hospitals 9-5 and then came home and opened the books. Life even as a student would go by for significant periods off time without socialising or having any kind of break from the grind. Some people did not make it through this, some people repeated years, many became disillusioned at the constant examining and testing that we underwent to guarantee we meet the strict criteria set by the GMC to be "good" doctors. Passing finals was one of the best moments of my life so far as it meant after 6 years I now had an actual job! This of course just means we are at the start of our real apprenticeship. Everything up to that point is simply so that you can go onto the ward on the first day and start to learn to be a safe and competent clinical decision-maker. What is important in this is to understand that it takes a minimum of 11-12 years to make a safe, robust independent clinical decision-maker and in many specialties this becomes 16-18 years.

Then there appears to be a perspective that there is a lack of competition within medicine and that everyone simply assimilates in some great gravy train that makes us into fat greedy doctors abusing the tax-payer! Firstly I would go and look at your own GP or consultant if you ever unfortunately have to see one and ask Do they look like the person the media is portraying? Is there a dissonance between the person you meet face to face and that which the great daily newspapers such as The Sun and Daily Telegraph would like to paint of us? What will happen if that person you go to see and trust with your most personal information in the hope they will make you better is replaced by someone so disillusioned that they feel any other career must be better than the one they have? Or alternatively not see anyone for several weeks as the practice can't hire GP's as no-one wants to become one any more? Or in hospital be seen by either no registrar or one that doesn't know the system and is there for one day only as the people who were there formally eventually realised it wasn't worth the crazy rota's and volume of hours they were doing and made a different career choice? If you think this is a horror story then you maybe haven't tried to get a GP appointment recently or been admitted to an acute ward as this is already an every day occurrence.

Competition within medical workforce is high. We compete at everything. Interviews, examinations, every few months we are placed in positions where we are forced to compete against one another. Almost every specialty now has a national competition where everyone from the country comes to a single place for the very aim of competing with one another. Right from the first day of medical school you realise you are competing with your friends, your colleagues and thankfully eventually you become mature enough not to vilify one another for doing well or not doing well and just accept it as a part of life. Many people do not get jobs and end up in places they didn't foresee. Some people simply don't make it. This is no different to some competitive professions but to say we all walk into some golden job security is way off the mark and comedic those who have travelled through the system.

We as doctors are saying to the public that we have never tried to make out we are immune from societal problems but we are also saying that relative to other high responsibility jobs we are actually being both paid LESS, pay has diminished significantly in the last few years relative to inflation, we work significant numbers of anti-social hours as a matter of routine in our jobs with the fatigue this brings, with great responsibility and high stakes if we make wrong decisions and are simply asking in this strike for things NOT TO GET WORSE. Because if they do people who are great clinicians and may potentially come and treat you will not be there. Because instead they will have chosen jobs with better hours, less stress and more family time. Because they will also feel devalued by a society turned against them by a government that is seeking once again to beat our morale to beat us down.

If you decide to side with the government on these proposals, are you then going to hold yourself to blame when the NHS system falls apart? What if a Tory government decides that private health insurance is the only way forward for a collapsing NHS? Is that where you want us to go as a country because that would appear to be the result aimed for. Then we will all become like one of the southern English NHS regions that has all its child and adolescent health managed by Virgin health services. Do you want to have Richard Branson's face plastered all over your local GP surgery? In 10 years from now this is the likely outcome unless something is done to stop it.

Private Eye take on it, presumably some truth in it?

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You do know public services means bureaucrats don't you?

You do know that private enterprise means shareholders, don't you?

Private Eye take on it, presumably some truth in it?

v8ninety - Member
Private Eye take on it, presumably some truth in it?
Absolutely. Have you had a sudden change of heart, Dragon?

[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippa_Whitford ]Dr Philippa Whitford MP (SNP)[/url] has the advantage that (unlike Hunt) she has spent decades working for the health service as a junior doctor and as a consultant.

She did a fantastic job of spelling it all out at the Commons Debate, held back in late October 2015:

Shame no one listened.

So Hunt shot down the latest attempt at a compromise and here it goes again....

Did you see him on Andrew Marr last Sunday? Incredible - Marr quoted back to him his precise words about the "11,000 extra deaths", and the statements of Keogh to the effect that these deaths could not be ascribed to lack of JD at weekends, and he still refused over and over again to admit that he was wrong.

[url= http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/10/doctors-training-as-specialists-at-all-time-low-leaked-figures-show?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other ]Doctors training as specialists at all time low[/url]

This is one of the main issues facing the health service due to the threat of this new contract.

My own (broad) specialty - core medical training - has seen competition numbers fallen by more than a half since I applied (down from just under 4 applicants per job in 2008 to 1.6 applicants/job this year). This means far fewer cardiologists, respiratory physicians, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists etc. We are already struggling to find any appointable candidates for cardiology jobs in my region. GP and Emergency Medicine training are in even worse shape.

The two medical students working with me at the moment aren't even planning to work in the UK at all after graduation - they've already had enough, and they haven't even started yet. Unless Mr Hunt does something to improve pay, conditions and morale in the NHS quickly, we're going to be faced with a huge workforce crisis within the next decade.

Don't worry Hunt has [url= http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/04/nhs-negotiator-writes-to-junior-doctors-avert-strike ]brought in Sir David Dalton[/url] to help negotiate.

Dalton? Where have I heard that name before?

Ah yes, [url= http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/05/private-health-lobbyist-nhs-privatisation-dalton-review ]The Dalton Review looking at options for privatisation in the NHS.[/url]

[url= https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/384126/Dalton_Review.pdf ]"Examining new options and opportunities for providers of NHS care", The Dalton Review, Dec 2014 (PDF)[/url]

That's already started, we have 3 consultant histopathologist vacancies (& have been trying to fill them for 18 months) & 1 currentl Dr just retired & another is leaving in Feb. Leaving 5 consultants to do the work of 12. Ultimately patients will suffer as no one is training for or wants the job. This is without the massive exodus of ancillary staff from the dept too.

The Mrs works in critical care environment. Four docs on a nine doc rota.

So many rotas got gaps. Whether Saturday is a normal day or not there are no staff to work it.

Currently work 60+ hours a week. Without working Saturdays...

I've been doing a bit of digging and, not only are competition ratios falling, but the quality of applicants is also dropping. The mean score for core medical trainee applications in 2013 was 26, in 2014 it was 24, and in 2015 it was 23. [url= http://www.ct1recruitment.org.uk/documents/?resources_page=2 ]Link - under "2013-2015 total score data"[/url]

Junior doctors were abandoning medicine even before this new contract was mooted due to pay and conditions. The new contract will only accelerate this.

We're getting fewer doctors and the ones that do stay aren't as good.

then the Tory's can say the NHS is broken and dismantle it...
then the private healthcare companies step in (which is already happening under the covers)

So many doctors interviewed on radio seem to say that they are in it for the patients, and thats their sole reason for being a doctor. If thats the case, maybe they should donate some of their extremely generous salaries to the less well off or allow it to be ploughed back in to the NHS.

Nah, I can't imagine they would either.

Yep. Make it fail, make it the fault of the doctors and the BMA - then privatise because everything [i]always[/i] gets better and cheaper when it involves a profit. 👿

loddrik, i believe doctors deserve every penny and more for the work they do. What other profession has such an immediate impact on peoples life for the better??

This complete dismantling of the NHS sickens me. But as a bystander what option do you have?

Loddrik, doctors would benefit from privatisation.

Private healthcare would pay a LOT more and allow them to play employers off each other. It would probably involve less hours.

Despite this the vast majority of NHS doctors are completely against privatisation.

Why? Patients.

He's trolling just ignore him.

What other profession has such an immediate impact on peoples life for the better??

Ambulance Driver.

So many doctors interviewed on radio seem to say that they are in it for the patients, and thats their sole reason for being a doctor. If thats the case, maybe they should donate some of their extremely generous salaries to the less well off or allow it to be ploughed back in to the NHS.

Er, which "extremely generous" salary? I've been qualified for 10 years and, after paying for my mortgage, bills and food, I break even every month. I only managed to buy my first property (with my doctor husband) 3 years ago (I'm now 33). I have £2,047 in my bank account at this moment. I give a small amount to charity by direct debit every month, but I don't think I could afford much more.

I'm not asking for a pay rise either. Just not a pay cut.

He's trolling just ignore him.

Nah, I can't be bothered writing up my PhD today. This is much more fun.

Lazy Dr's.

Loddrik - on then. Why do you think juniors salaries are too generous?

Given many are going overseas and applications to training are fallin year on year and vacancies rising there is clearly a problem.

Ambulance Driver.

Saw this on Facebook and thought of you Drac:

[img] [/img]

Doctors don't work any harder than say, lorry drivers, road layers, security guards, etc etc. All who do similar if not more hours. And get paid a pittance in comparison. But because they are not 'saving lives' then that ok.

So no, I have absolutely no sympathy for doctors whatsoever. And because my opinion is different to someone else's then obviously I'm 'trolling'...