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Junior doctors don't do themselves any favours with those Aldi comparisons. What's the pay progression, career progression, job security and pensions comparison after 5,10,20 years in those jobs? Chalk and cheese.
Just stick to the facts, which unfortunately neither side seem to be willing to do.
Just stick to the facts, which unfortunately neither side seem to be willing to do.
Obese chance....
...meanwhile the patients look on aghast.
Is the strike still on?
What else do they want?
Crikey ... 😯
Hang on, I work weekends and get no extra pay, that's what I knew I was getting into when I chose my career.
I don't think Drs should be paid more for working weekends, they should be paid a fair wage for the job they do, regardless of the day.
They knew what they were getting when they signed up too. That happened to include unsocial hours payments. It's their removal that is one of the issues. It's like you suddenly getting told you'll be paid less for working the same hours. They aren't after more money, just the same money they got when they took the job.
. It's like you suddenly getting told you'll be paid less for working the same hours.
More hours but yes that.
Sorry not sure if this has been posted yet or not ?
Vote of no confidence in Mr Hunt 😆
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/121152
227,000 signatures
Signed in a heartbeat; not that it'll make a shred a difference I don't suppose. It's now up to more than 234,000, and growing rapidly. Petition terms of reference not damning enough in my opinion.
Petitions are all very well but there was an election last year - if people didn't want tory policies they should have voted labour. Too late now. There's no cooling off period with these things.
I wanted to reply to some of the more recent comments regarding the impression that this is about pay. What the government are cunningly doing is reducing the amount that out of hours will be paid in a way that will discourage people from entering certain specialties. This is probably not going to make a lot of sense to some people who don't have previous experience of working in hopsital's but I will try to make it as clear as I can.
1) It is possible that for many wages will even actually rise. Yes rise! Yet there is a 98% vote in favour of strikes. How could this be? Surely if many people will gain then there is nothing to complain about?
2) The basic rate of pay is to rise. The government has offered 11%. This sounds fantastic! Most people would be delighted with that sort of rise! And if we all worked 9-5 every day (or 7-10pm as David Cameron would have us work) then we would all indeed be 11% better off under the new pay deal.
3) Currently working Saturday and Sunday and nights are regarded as shifts that count towards a "banding" in a job and for many rotas that work 1:3 or 1:4 weekends this banding is 40-50% on top of the basic salary. One of the key things to remember in this is the rotas for jobs are not negotiable and are worked to the absolute limit of 48 hours averaged over 13 weeks with many working rotas of 11-12 days in a row starting on Mondays and finishing the following Friday. Naturally these 11-12 days are all high stress, emotional and by the end make you want to be anywhere but caring for patient's, although this does not appear to factor into rota planning, probably because it is not done by doctors or even nurses but managers.
So we have a situation currently where doctors will often rotate through long stints followed by weeks with more normal hours although these will often still include the following weekend but you may only say work 40 hours the following week. Again the rota is averaged out to meet the criteria set out in the contracts
4) for overnight registrars, there are 2 types of jobs either 1) basing oneself on site physically or 2) available on the phone at home. Currently there are complicated rules regarding how people are paid for this although currently there is a set amount that is connected to the banding the doctor receives. The government is proposing drastically reducing the amount paid for non-resident on-calls. What's important to know is that often although these doctors are at home they will be phoned often several times a night for advice, sometimes be required to go in to see seriously unwell patients and will get very little sleep. Then they are expected to work the preceeding and following day as normal. This is a bigger problem than it looks from the outset as these types of jobs are often the ones where highly complex decisions must be made. Reducing the incentive to do these types of jobs will mean complex care will suffer as less people will want to do them! Difficult point to explain but for very tired more senior junior doctors, it's important!
5) Currently pay progression is automatic year on year. This is because unlike other jobs, every year of clinical experience gained literally means you become entrusted with more seniority and also more independent decision-making. For example, I am currently in my 3rd post-graduate year. I would still go to another junior doctor who may be in say their 6th or 8th postgraduate year as they are both most definitely my senior and will also likely know the answer to my question. Doctors do not become consultants until they literally can be trusted to know the answer to almost any question posed to them and if they don't will know exactly who to ask to receive a very swift response. So year on year pay progression is particularly important to doctors as it is in line with responsibility and decision-making.increasing. Yet this government wants to remove this. It wants to set specific definitions of what more seniority means and reduce the number of times pay progression occurs. This means in real terms that people will take on greater responsibility, training and all out stress without any real rise in income. What other job does this? Do people stay in these jobs for long?
There are also other interesting aspects including those taking time to do academic training that would lose out in the new contract as this time would now not be considered as part of pay progression despite many working par-time in their old jobs out of necessity plus there research increasing their seniority within a specific specialty. Plus those who take maternity leave in particular are really going to lose out as none of these years will be counted for progression. This has been a matter of hot debate but what's important to realise is that this may in particular disincentivise potential mothers from entering specialties where they currently make up large numbers of the workforce eg. medical specialties or emergency medicine. Needless to say these are the specialties that are in crisis already over recruitment as they tend to offer the worst rotas out of necessity.
Given all the above information I want to now tell you why what the government is wanting to do is being roundly rejected by all doctors. And I also want to tell you why, even if many might gain from the new contracts, junior doctors and also many other more senior doctors ore now up in arms against their supposed "imposition."
The first things the government wants to do is do away with the current banding system. Instead of stating that if a doctor works evenings and weekends they will receive a set banding, the government wants to now start paying based on the actual numbers of hours worked varying on the specific hours they do. Of note is the removal of 7am-7pm on a saturday from this and the offer to pay a 30% supplement for work on a saturday night or sunday. They will pay a 50% supplement for nights. This on the face of it sounds ok. Until you come to the actual rotas. As a junior doctor working in the NHS I have become very accustomed to rotas designed by hospitals that are set to maximise the unsocial hours worked whilst minimising the pay given to juniors. The inevitable outcome of these new rotas will be to get us to be paid less overall. In fact the only reason my current cohort of colleagues will not be paid less is that the government have agreed to give those who would be paid less a promise they will receive whatever the extra would be to make up to their current wages. Naturally some will be paid more. Particularly those who work LESS unsocial hours in their jobs. What a great thing, rewarding those who work ordinary hours whilst reducing the amount paid to those who do more unsocial hours. That will clearly increase the desire to work in jobs that provide out of hours care!
Also, what about those who start working after the new contract is signed? Oh they aren't covered by any pay promise. Under the new system they will simply have a Saturday as a normal day. Plus Sunday is paid at 30% supplement whereas in real terms currently it is more like 50%. And they will be paid the same for nights. This in terms of pay is where the real issue is: for FUTURE generations this is a pay cut. And 6 days in the week are now considered "normal" working hours.
All of a sudden applying to work in a specialty where there are significant amounts of out of hours works becomes even less attractive. Specialties such as say A&E for example. Which already has a recruitment crisis. Do people feel they currently get seen in short enough time already in A&E? Sure if you feel that the time you have spent in a waiting room to see an A&E doctor, anxiously waiting with a loved one or if your child has a severely high temperature and you want them seen immediately, is time you would rather spend there in the waiting room than in the department getting seen quicker. Then sure, go ahead and support these proposals.
Because there will be less doctors there. And also probably less nurses, because we all fear that the government is coming for them next. It turns out many of them have families they like to see too. Particularly at weekends for some reason.
How about becoming a medical registrar? We currently have 4 of 8 medical registrars we are supposed to have. Maybe you didn't know this but the medical registrar at night is the most senior decision-maker actually in the hospital. Some of ours have been graduated from medical school for a mere 3 years. Yet there they are, at night, being the decision-maker for people with strokes, heart attacks, severe hypoglycaemias, you name it, they are it. Yet the new pay deal seems to want to disincentivise people from doing jobs that require out of ours work. Surely the government must see, as we do as doctors, that those who do out of hours work should be valued above all others? As the system in the NHS depends on these people working high stress jobs right through the night, surely we should be increasing these people's wages to compensate them for the incredible work they do. Alas no. Instead those who work 9-5, monday to friday will benefit significanty but those who work out of hours will see real-time decreases in their wages whilst being asked to work more weekend days for less money.
I'm hoping I am starting to make some coherent sense now as to why even on this point alone it is worth not accepting the governments offer. I think I have gone on too long to make too many more points but I want you all to know we are doing this so that when you want 24/7 care from the NHS, there are people capable to manage your illness who feel adequately supported and who feel motivated to be at work at the wrong times of the day. I also want you to know that this makes a mockery of the government's argument that they are doing this to engender more 24/7 cover by doctors. This is the very opposite of what will happen and everyone who cares about the NHS should oppose them too.
This is a letter from the BMA lead Joann Malawala. He states the case from the doctors side of course. Shows some of the political shite being loaded into the debate.
Dear All
This week has been a roller coaster of events and emotions. When I came into this job 5 months ago, I came into it because frankly I was angry at how I felt my friends, my colleagues and I were being treated. I absolutely could not stand the idea of having something being imposed upon us by a government that has no clue what it is we do.
Over the last 5 months I have felt like many of you, needing to moderate my language. I know that my job is not to simply represent my frustrations, but to stand up for all of our collective interests whether junior doctors or the patients we look after. JDC members are often the same, they represent the views of their regions with a passionate resolve to do the best for the doctors they have in their patch. I have seen the same from representatives across the board this year, whether they are college trainee groups or specialty organisations. I have seen junior doctor leaders put aside previous silo competitive traditions and work together in a way that none of us have seen before. One thing I hope beyond everything else is that as a profession this has a longer term effect on our generation of doctors. We will work together in a collaborative way for the good of our profession, patients and the whole NHS, in a way I have not seen previously. Over the last decade I have seen the bastardisation of the concept of clinical leadership by the department of health. Turning it into a method of control where professionals are trained simply to follow instructions and kept in line simply out of fear of a loss of influence or position. This week we have seen the outcome of that agenda, when clinicians stand up for themselves, their patients and what they think is right, the answer is aggression, bullying and being effectively screamed at. The will of a politician or a government will simply be imposed on those that disagree. So much for independent clinical leadership or professionalism.
On Tuesday I met with Sir David Dalton at his request. I have been clear throughout the last few months that last minute offers in general are highly inappropriate as the government has had three years to make fair offers. We have tried to talk, to negotiate in good faith. We have represented our members, but we have also been of a clear view that our members believe in a sustainable NHS. Retention of the doctors in the UK is our number 1 priority as without the talented individuals that deliver the frontline of the NHS, it is our patients that ultimately suffer. I notice in the latest HSJ article, Sir David has misrepresented that meeting and the clear view I expressed that I heard from many doctors throughout the NHS. We are always happy to negotiate, but a negotiation has to involve recognising both sides views and priorities. We had spent a huge amount of time and effort consulting with you, our membership, looking at the stated aims of the government in terms of priorities, but also using our experiences of the frontline to solve the contractual dispute to the satisfaction of all parties. We understood compromise was necessary, however we also assumed that compromise was needed from both parties.
The issue regarding out of hours has been attempted to be boiled down to simply about pay. When we constructed our structure of pay, we also took into account the implications and considerations of the needs of the NHS. If you simply move money into basic salary and undervalue the out of hours components of the salary structure, you create perverse incentives as the relative value of time out of hours diminishes. This has a knock on effect as it creates a driver that devalues specialties that have heavy out of hours commitments relative to others. This could have a further destabilising effect on the delivery of those services as already overstretched services become less popular due to their relative differences. Therefore we wanted to create a system of pay that valued time appropriately especially when we want to retain and recruit staff into those specialties. The issues regarding front loading and flattening of the pay scale were specifically trying to square a circle, a treasury red line of the removal of automatic pay progression from the public sector and our desire to ensure that we did not penalise or perpetuate the gender pay gap. We also wanted a system of pay that ultimately benefited the next generation of doctors. Ensuring that the wage inflation compared the to cost of living inflation benefitted the doctor, starting out on their career, considering the debts students now qualify with. If nothing else, this structure showed our absolute attempts at addressing competing interests that many felt were insurmountable. Our structure of pay involving appropriate rewards for unsocial hours was also staff group specific. With the majority of the staff group being at a stage in life when families and childcare was inevitable, it was important that appropriate account was taken for this to try and retain highly trained staff. It balanced competing interests of family life and professional responsibilities.
On the issues around NROC, we identified early that this was an area that was particularly of concern. We have experience of NROC on our negs team, however the full extent of the varied and diverse working structures meant we were absolutely clear we wanted to consult further on this area. We were also absolutely clear that the government position of continuously comparing the roles of junior doctors with more senior staff where the range and types of responsibilities are different does not make sense. Percentages of values that are so very different also have an impact, where the financial barrier to rostering practices that have the potential to take advantage of junior doctors cannot be sanctioned. Again there was an absolute refusal to understand the concerns we described and the “needs of the service” were always paramount - a concept we can all sign up to if those needs are not so dangerously overstretching staff that doctors and patients are forced into dangerous situations. We suggested a proper consultation and testing of positions, however this has now obviously been rejected.
The experience of all negotiators over the last three years have been of negotiating partners that continuously introduce new objectives very late in the process, - 7 days services (June 2015) First refusal on medical time (January 2016) to name two, and yet cry foul if we attempt to suggest that these involve a requirement for additional resource or that they are undeliverable due to the current overstretched staff. There is also a continuous disingenuity in that compromises made are often rowed back on and so promises can never be trusted. Add to this toxic mix of continuous political interference for objectives that have nothing to do with the service or patient care, but entirely focussed on soundbite politics and a constant need to look like there is a political victory to be had. You see why this whole sorry episode has been a lesson for the NHS and the medical profession in all that is fundamentally wrong with our current system. The department and NHSE in particular, fundamentally entered this whole negotiation with seemingly the attitude they had to teach the medical profession a lesson and put them in their place following previous negotiations.
So the contract that has been described, has several aspects that are fundamentally unfair; the distribution of resource across the whole week; the first refusal on medical time; the nature of NROC; the ultimate safety mechanisms in the contract and the confidence we can have in them, the delivery of many of the mechanisms that are reliant on collaborative working, the ultimate appeals mechanisms for dangerous activity. There have been a hell of a lot of gains as a result of our attempts to outline what junior doctors do from modifying the flawed pay structure, some of the safety limits, making a fundamentally unworkable safety mechanism have some resemblance of what could work if there was any trust left in the system. However there is so much still flawed with this system. If this was about comparing what we currently do, its easy to misrepresent the situation. But its the nature of the services and distribution of staffing projecting forward and overstitching those staff that is so flawed. There is an absolute finite staffing resource. You cannot deliver a 7 day service when the current 5 days is falling apart and is dangerous.
Several times over this process we have tried to suggest that it’s in no ones interest to have this damaging fight, however that is not simply solved by the medical profession being “taught a lesson”. In November despite an incredible mandate, we called on the government to enter Acas to find a solution, in December despite last minute interference again to try and prevent a deal being found, we were able to find the starting point for negotiations and we stood down despite significant mistrust and strength of feeling. In January despite every attempt to find a solution to the problems we all could see, giving Sir David Dalton the space to come in and pulling more industrial action to give us all the space to find solutions, we still faced this intransigence and absolute unwillingness to compromise for political reasons. We had suggested that for the last few weeks that the whole situation has got out of hand and it would be in everyones interest to step back from the abyss and try and solve the issues of morale amongst junior doctors. Build trust back in the system and try and solve some of the educational shortcomings in the current system. Unfortunately once again machismo and political interference took precedence and rather than seeing we had one opportunity to try and stop a damaging course of events, the day after junior doctors across England go out on industrial action and feelings are elevated, the Secretary of State decides now is the appropriate time to show how deeply muscular the government is. Obviously burying bad news about waiting time figures - the first time ever that the target for routine operations has been missed, or that the departments budget has been exceeded due to massive mismanagement and requires a treasury bailout, I am sure had nothing to do with making a political announcement to destroy the last vestiges of morale in the junior doctor workforce in this country.
What next is what every junior doctor and the wider profession is asking? Well the government has published a very short summary of the some aspects of the contract they intend on “imposing”. We need to truly look at this and the implications. We can already see significant shortcomings that mean this proposal is not something junior doctors have stated they would sign up to. But unlike the government, the JDC and the BMA do want to actually listen to our members. Below is a list of open meetings I will be attending:
Monday 15th Norfolk and Norwich Hospital Mess meeting 12.30pm
Monday 15th East of England RJDC, Clinical School, Addenbrookes, 7pm
Tuesday 16th Bristol for joint RJDC/Bristol Divisional meeting 7pm
Wednesday 17th East Midlands RJDC meeting TBC
Thursday 18th South Thames RJDC - BMA House 6.30pm
Friday 19th West Midlands RJDC - Birmingham Chamber of Commerce 75 Harborne Road, Edgbaston Birmingham B15 3DH 7pm
There are also open RJDC meetings:
Monday 15th Northern RJDC Royal station hotel Newcastle 6.30pm
Tuesday 16th Oxford RJDC - John Radcliffe Lecture theatre 2, 6.30pm
We will look much more into the detail of the proposals should we get detail and look at where these will need to be challenged. We will seriously now have to consider every option available to JDC and consider what is in the best interests of our generation and the next of doctors, our wider profession, the NHS and our patients. Ultimately we cannot sit by and watch the government alienate a generation of doctors and thereby destroy the NHS we work so hard every day to make better and protect. The governments aim maybe to teach the medical profession a lesson, but in doing so they have shown their willingness and almost eagerness to destroy our NHS. The government often whispers about this as their miners moment. What happened with the mining industry? Is that what this government envisages for the NHS?
It is time for us all the take stock. The staff of the NHS never asked for unfair payrises, we never destroyed the financial system, we didn’t abuse our positions for personal gain. All we want is to be treated fairly and to not have the organisation we love and dedicate our lives to be destroyed by a government that puts their personal gain above the people they are supposed to represent.
I will say one last thing, its very easy to make this about Jeremy Hunt. But fundamentally, deep down, I think we need to squarely lay the blame at David Cameron. He has stood by and ensured that ultimately the NHS he claimed to want to protect has been systematically destroyed since being elected by attacking the very staff that sweat blood and tears trying to protect it, work for it and love it.
Best wishes
Johann
ps you will hear from me in due course….
will say one last thing, its very easy to make this about Jeremy Hunt. But fundamentally, deep down, I think we need to squarely lay the blame at David Cameron. He has stood by and ensured that ultimately the NHS he claimed to want to protect has been systematically destroyed since being elected by attacking the very staff that sweat blood and tears trying to protect it, work for it and love it.
Oh yes. There is a lot of hate on social media for Jeremy Hunt, as if he is the sole architect of this nonsense. I see him more as an expendable asset to the bigger process. As soon as his reputation becomes too toxic he will be replaced just as Lansley was before him. Or Gove for that matter. In terms of putting someone in post to brazenly spin, lie and obfuscate through the drama, (which was always going to be a drama whoever was the secretary of state for health, lets not think that any of this would be all that different under any conservative minister) then in crude and cynical political terms, (rather than the interests of the taxpayers or patients I mean) Hunt is doing his job just fine.
Politically it is just great for the conservatives to be able to blame this shitstorm on Hunt rather than on the party and their financial backers as a whole.
It is lovely to blame Hunt if only for the constant gift of his name but he is just the sacrificial lighting conductor this is a Tory plan conceived in cabinet and owned by Cameron who has deliberately hidden from debate on the subject to avoid getting the blood on his hands and the stain on his reputation.
At least ninfan's its all about money point has been dealt with in the posts above.
Unfortunately ninfan and the other right-wingers will always unquestionably believe and stand up for tory values. Even if it means consistently misrepresenting the truth. Bit like Hameron and *unt really.
In 1946 the BMA mounted a highly personalised attack on the then Secretary of State for Health Aneurin Bevan.
In exactly the same way they've acted with every single health secretary since the BMA basically bullied a government minister and mounted a sustained personalised attack to stop him establishing the NHS. At the time Bevan described the BMA as follows:
[i]"a small body of politically poisoned people" who had decided "to fight the Health Act itself and to stir up as much emotion as they can in the profession."[/i] (source - wikipedia).
It'a a matter of record that at least 2 of the BMA's current lead negotiators stated their intent 18 months ago to use the renegotiations as a proxy for a left wing attack on the government -Yannis Gourtsoyannis went as far as to say " a victory for the junior doctors would signify the first real crack in the entire edifice of austerity in the UK”.
The reason the negotiations have taken 4 years is very little to do with the current Secretary of State - he has personally had very little to do with the negotiations as those have been handled by NHS Employers, comprising NHS Chief Execs and clinicians amongst others.
The real reason there's no agreement and why the BMA has effectively run a massive bullying campaign on social media is that it never intended to compromise on anything. The principles underpinning the changes to the contract they say can't work are already the basis of contracts worked by hundreds of thousands of nurses, paramedics and AHPs. Doctors have been systematically misled by their union - which has gone as far as using made up numbers in a calculator as the basis for the 40% pay cut claim. You can't blame the doctors but I think if they had first hand experience of the brazen dishonesty within the senior ranks of the BMA they may reach a different conclusion as to why the negotiations ultimately failed.
Your posts are very funny.
the BMA has effectively run a massive bullying campaign on social media is that it never intended to compromise on anything.
This got the biggest laugh from me
Out of interest did you ever write a dossier for Tony?
This got the biggest laugh from me
Yes, that was a good one, but I prefer:
Doctors have been systematically misled by their union
in defence of a Health Secretary who continually misused studies of the "weekend effect" even after the fallacy of his statements was exposed in the clearest possible terms, and then claimed support for his contract imposition from people who had never given that support.
I like this one.
The principles underpinning the changes to the contract they say can't work are already the basis of contracts worked by hundreds of thousands of nurses, paramedics
No they're really not. We have as strict as possible working time regulations, we can't force staff to do more than 5 shifts in a row, they must have 11 hours off between shifts, we try to make sure they get the breaks they're entitled to sadly that often fails. The working week is 37.5 hours worked out over 13 weeks so nothing like Dr's at all.
No they're really not. We have as strict as possible working time regulations, we can't force staff to do more than 5 shifts in a row, they must have 11 hours off between shifts, we try to make sure they get the breaks they're entitled to sadly that often fails. The working week is 37.5 hours worked out over 13 weeks so nothing like Dr's at all.
Yes, but apart from that j5m is completely correct.
Oh look - more lies ...
Just 5 minutes? I'd have thought it would take longer than that to read the Telegraph and Daily Mail to get these opinions?! I challenge you, whoever you are (Hunt's godson?) to come to a BMA meeting and meet these "misled" people. You trust them with your life yet don't believe they can see through the obfuscation of the lies propogated by this government to suit their ends. Believe me if we felt that more people were dying at weekends due to doctors staffing we would all be at work.
This is the very opposite of what will happen
Excellent post, speedstar - especially regarding the likely effect upon on-call registrars. Given [i]existing[/i] gaps in acute care rotas, it's extraordinary that they should be penalised.
Doctors have been systematically misled by their union
Yes, because thousands of highly-trained medics are entirely incapable of thinking for themselves.
You are beyond satire.
As for bullying on social media - what, like (repeatedly) pointing out Hunt's abuse of stats? Or how his 7 day rhetoric remains unfunded and dangerously unworkable (e.g. the excellent @bendean1979 on Twitter)? Or how the welcome goal of uniform provision (+/- certain elective stuff) will not be achieved by stretching 5 day resourcing over 7? Or why an imposed contract will worsen existing recruitment issues? And - [i]above all[/i] - why this presents a threat to patient safety?
he has personally had very little to do with the negotiations
Other than imposing this damn stupid contract and cooking-up a spurious case for it. The unease of FT execs (see the ongoing "signaturegate") speaks volumes.
Now imagine all this squeeze coming from EU-SSR where the bureaucrats dictate to the ministers of the member state to " ...deal with it ..." or else ... 😯
Does anyone become a doctor for the 9-5? Surely no junior doctor thought they'd work Monday to Friday 9-5: personally, I'm self-employed and so have the luxury of working 7 days a week in an industry where it's deemed ok that you can contact me on high days and holidays. I've had calls and even visitors - 'we were just passing' - on New Year's Day, Christmas Day, Mother's Day.. Yet I greet each and every one with a smile. And to supplement the inevitable quiet times I do agency work for the profession I am qualified to do.
It seems the NHS is in financial and workforce freefall so maybe it's time to admit defeat and start charging?
bex - MemberDoes anyone become a doctor for the 9-5? Surely no junior doctor thought they'd work Monday to Friday 9-5:
Absolutely none of this is about working 9-5.
Absolutely none of this is about working 9-5
No it's about money
Doctors are a well paid mobile workforce where demand outstrips supply
They are part of the top 1% of the workforce and expect to treated like that or will exercise their mobility by moving or becoming locums
They feel its demeaning that unsocial hours might be paid without an appropriate enhancement to reflect the additional commitment
They will also retire early as the latest pension reforms mean that working beyond a point where their pension pot is valued >£1million they no longer get tax relief and so might as well retire
They also make important decisions which affect your quality or extent of life so unless you are very lucky you need them
At the end of the day you just need to doff your cap and throw money at them
And remember mid staffs was the NHS managers not the doctors killing people
So in summary, throw money at them. AKA, stuff their pockets with gold
Jeebus some of the posters on this thread make me weep.
Some just have a different political view, and that's fair enough. Not the way I see it, but interesting to hear the viewpoint from the other side of the fence.
But others seem to be motivated purely out of spite and the idea that anyone who is better off than them deserves to get shafted and has no right to complain about it. That's just sad. 😕
FWIW:
teef said>
It doesn't seem to have even crossed your mind that you're overpaid - entitlement syndrome? ..
I've been in a job and had a 10% pay cut - didn't like it but it was the circumstances the time.
Arrogant know all syndrome?
Out of interest, when you got your 10% cut did your boss publicly tell everyone it was actually an 11% pay rise?
And did he also denounce you as being responsible for 6,000 deaths because you had a "9 till 5 culture" and "lacked vocation" despite the fact that A) that wasn't what the research said and B) he knew fine well that you already worked nights and weekends and weren't even remotely 9 till 5.
bex said>
Does anyone become a doctor for the 9-5? Surely no junior doctor thought they'd work Monday to Friday 9-5
Correct, they didn't.
And the strikes weren't about them wanting to work 9-5 either.
big_n_daft said>
No it's about money
....At the end of the day you just need to doff your cap and throw money at them
At no point during this strike have the junior doctors asked for [i]more[/i] money.
They don't want to be paid less than they currently are - who would? Especially when the public are being told it is a pay rise.
But the bigger issue is that the banding system was originally brought in to discourage trusts from speccing rotas with stupidly long unsociable hours, because doing so would cost them money.
That safeguard has worked well.
Too well, because the Tories realise that in order to spread five days worth of staff over seven days they'll need to get doctors to work stupidly long unsociable hours again - so they need to "reform" by reducing the safeguard and replacing it with a toothless alternative with no financial penalty.
Still I'm sure things will be so much better with a privatised NHS.
I see for example that a private firm Alliance Medical (whose board includes Malcolm Ri****d MP) have just been awarded an £80 million contract for cancer screening, [url= http://www.buzzfeed.com/solomonhughes/nhs-contract-stoke ]despite an NHS consortium putting in a bid that was £7 million cheaper[/url].
That's the kind of private sector efficiencies you just can't get in the public sector eh? 🙄
What's baffling is that whoever is feeding the press from the Dr's point of view is doing a staggeringly bad job of it....it's actually quite simple, I had the misfortune of treating a local politician who counts Hunt as a friend....she asked me why NHS staff were up in arms about an 11% pay rise?....
...to her it was that simple, as far as she (and the media seem to believe) we're all getting an 11% pay rise and are being unreasonable and ungrateful about it.
I explained to her that my salary currently enjoys a 25% unsocial enhancement for working nights, bank holidays, weekends and public holidays (christmas, New year etc)....the current proposals are to take this away and replace it with the much heralded 11% 'rise'.....problem is that if you take 25% of my salary and just replace it with 11% I have a shortfall (or pay cut) of 14% in reality.
The old bird wasn't a bad lass actually and once I'd explained it to her like that she was disgusted.....the problem is this basic illustration doesn't seem to be getting through on the news, instead it's being lost in the hysteria about privatisation of the NHS....that may or may not happen but it's not the issue here.
For a supposedly bright workforce the junior DR's seem to be muddying the waters and diluting their own case by going off on rants about the destruction of the NHS, to the casual listener it's hyperbole and people switch off.
Stick to the point about pay and hammer it home time after time after time....make the press, the public and the politicians understand completely that this is a pay cut....taking away existing unsocial hours enhancements (which often total 25%+ of an NHS workers salary) and replacing with an 11% 'rise' is actually a 14% cut....stick to that argument and you might get more of the public onboard because the general public don't have the attention span to work out all the nuances of this debacle.
Ultimately the biggest losers with be the public, the NHS will become nothing more than a training ground for nurses, doctors and paramedics to learn, qualify and then leave for more money elsewhere....leaving the general public to be treated by very junior staff while those who can afford insurance will get the benefit of being treated by the more experienced clinicians that left the NHS over this scandal.
You can't blame Dr's for what the press report.
The pay rise is now 13.5%, the government has increased it, likewise they have conceded a Saturday supplement to any doctor who has to work 1 in 4 and finally pay is protected for all but those whose hours are not compliant.
The Observer's [url= http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/14/observer-view-on-junior-doctors-dispute ]leader[/url] yesterday seems to me a pretty reasonable summary of the dispute.
It's actually not a "pay rise" of 13.5%. It's actually an average of the increase in amount of basic pay "on transition" from an old pay point to a new one. Some juniors will therefore get up to a 25% pay rise. The most senior "junior doctors" are getting a 2% pay rise.
This is offset by the loss of the 40-50% banding that was received for the unsocial hours payment.
The present safeguards were brought in about 10 years ago - this was at the time my wife was working an average 85hr week - this was for an 18 month period - she worked a split weekend every other weekend. Do we really want to remove these safeguards ?
Her normal week was a 36hr shift every tuesday (9am tuesday to 6pm wednesday without any sleep) with 9 to 5 (usually 7 ) every other day
Weekend was either:
Friday 9am to saturday 9am then Sunday 9am to Monday 6pm
Or
Saturday 9am to Sunday 9am
I used to regularly chat with other medics who had done 48 or 27 hr shift with maybe an hour or 2 sleep every night
Do we really think this is the best way to have our doctors well rested and able to make decisions ?
One thing I haven't heard is where is the extra funding coming from to to employ all the extra people to run a full 7 day shift pattern ? the ohs budget is £116.4 billion this year- so what would it cost to bring us up to a full 7 days ?
Btw the NHS is cheap for what it offers - have a look [url= http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PCAP?order=wbapi_data_value_2013+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc ]here[/url] at health expenditure per head - most developed countries spend a fair amount more than us per head :
The pay rise is now 13.5%, the government has increased it
Yep, all part of the "greedy doctors" spin.
First they make the story that doctors are striking over an 11% rise, then they say, look your strikes are killing people, we can go to 13.5% but no more!
Unfortunately a lot of people are fooled by this spin and deceit (see the lady in deviant's comment above), even though Hunt himself describes the changes as "cost neutral".
Yup. TBH if this was a board game or something that'd be a great move. But they're supposed to be running the NHS not beating it with clever, unscrupulous moves.
deviant - MemberWhat's baffling is that whoever is feeding the press from the Dr's point of view is doing a staggeringly bad job of it
STW victim blaming 😆
I see for example that a private firm Alliance Medical (whose board includes Malcolm Ri****d MP) have just been awarded an £80 million contract for cancer screening, despite an NHS consortium putting in a bid that was £7 million cheaper.
The contract award was more than a year ago and Malcolm Ri****d is quite rightly no longer an MP. It's quite likely the procurement took into account a range of factors in the award criteria - cost is thankfully almost never the sole criteria.
Interesting post deviant and link mefty - thx
A little closer to the non-spin reality of events in both cases
It's quite likely the procurement took into account a range of factors in the award criteria - cost is thankfully almost never the sole criteria.
I'd be interested to know what those other criteria might be because it seems a bit odd that a private firm could make better diagnosises, using the same scanner and most likely the same NHS staff or at least staff with the same NHS training.
And if they can then wouldn't £7 million go a long way to bringing the NHS team up to the same standard?
Personally I think any contract paid for by public money should be published in full along with the procurement and decision documents
Ah more lies and disappearing Hunts.
Doctors paid £15 a ticket to attend an event with Jeremy Hunt. He got wind of this, quietly moved the event to a different location and told the doctors it was "cancelled".
I dunno, on the fence about this one, if you're planning to go to an event to disrupt it or hassle a guest, I don't think you can complain [i]too[/i] much if someone uses a little fib to deter you.
Maybe it's time to bring out the big guns
IMO, that [i]Observer[/i] editorial does not adequately address either the weakening of existing safeguards - or the effect of the net pay [b]cut[/b] on the worsening recruitment situation. There are already significant rota gaps in acute specialties. This contract will not remedy them.
It's fast-becoming academic, anyway - what matters is how patients and clinical staff will be experiencing this on the ground. It will be a world away from DoH spin.
I'd be interested to know what those other criteria might be because it seems a bit odd that a private firm could make better diagnosises, using the same scanner and most likely the same NHS staff or at least staff with the same NHS training.
The contract didn't go to a "private firm". It's a consortium comprising the The Christie NHS Foundation Trust - which is well known for it's world class cancer diagnosis / treatments, as well as other local NHS Trusts, charitable providers and academic institutions.
Alliance Medical seem to be bringing new technology and expertise of driving process efficiency to the party - which has the potential to reduce wait times and increase early detection. Both of which can lead to improvements in cancer outcomes. The UK continues to have amongst the worst cancer survival rates in Europe so maintaining the current status quo clearly hasn't worked.
".... seem to be bringing new technology and expertise of driving process efficiency to the party".
Ex-oncology nurse here. What are these, can you elaborate?
the BMA has effectively run a massive bullying campaign on social media is that it never intended to compromise on anything.
Really? Where?
The government is trying to win over the Daily Mail reader, and quite frankly succeeding on that front at the minute.
There was an NHS bashing article in the DM last week. A senior GP responded saying he couldn't see why doctors had a problem with their 11% pay rise, and they should just shut up and get on with it. Of course this went down very well with the DM readership.
Mrs FD spent all of 2 mins googling him. He's a government advisor, and on their payroll 🙄