The hours nurses and doctors do terrify me.
But its a right of passage. I remember the older generation doctors around 1990 moaning how soft the upcoming doctors were and they should put up and shut up, as it was part of training for the job. There's nowt new in the world.
Doctors will never be poor no matter what the junior doctors moan about, they have the best Union out there, which will probably get the Tory proposals watered down. It can be summed up by Aneurin Bevan's quote on getting them onboard with the NHS; “I stuffed their mouths with gold.”
Doctors will never be poor no matter what the junior doctors moan about, they have the best Union out there.
Nice to see the capitalist types on here getting all het up about a group of suppliers of a service with an excellent (for them!) supply versus demand arrangment and a fantastic grp of lobbyists.
Again, it seems absolutley fine and the way of the world for real businesses to lobby the bejeesus out of the government, we listen to them and put politicians on their boards of directors and their directors in powerful advisory roles to government, and then everyone forgets that this is not a million miles away from what unions do for their members.
"It can be summed up by Aneurin Bevan's quote on getting them onboard with the NHS; “I stuffed their mouths with gold.”
This speaks volumes Bevan wanted the British people to have a world class health service and was prepared to pay to get it . Cameron and Hunt could not care less about the British peoples health and now are quite happy to erode Dr's pay and conditions to the point where the service and thus the health of the people suffer .
The shameful Hospitals "are dangerous at weekends" spin was just a pre announcement propaganda exercise to portray the NHS in a bad light and erode public support prior to these changes to conditions.
I'm not het up about doctors they have a stressful job but over a lifetime get well remunerated for it. Luckily for them backed up by a very strong Union who defend their rights. Don't forget that doctors sit on a lot of powerful government and company boards as well. It was always fun reading their meeting agendas while sitting in the 1st class carriage on the rush hour Oxford to London train 😆
It can be summed up by Aneurin Bevan's quote on getting them onboard with the NHS; “I stuffed their mouths with gold.”
Except you fail to mention it was by allowing them 2 have to jobs, you know so they could earn more money as the NHS didn't offer them enough.
But its a right of passage
A fantastic attitude to something which compromises patient care.
It can be summed up by Aneurin Bevan's quote on getting them onboard with the NHS; “I stuffed their mouths with gold.”
It could, but only by someone who misunderstood the context of the original quote and the context of the current discussion.
This speaks volumes Bevan wanted the British people to have a world class health service and was prepared to pay to get it .
This is true but the 'stuffing their mouths with gold' comment was in reference to the BMA's strong opposition to the creation of a national health service. He silenced them by stuffing their mouths with gold.
But its a right of passage.
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These changes directly harm patient safety.
One of the reasons the current pay banding system exists is to ensure that a Trust doesn't make doctors work ridiculous hours, gives them suitable breaks and doesn't make them work a large number of anti-social hours. Or at the very least suitably compensates them if they do.
The [url= http://bma.org.uk/working-for-change/in-depth-junior-and-consultant-contract/ddrb-recommendations-analysis-for-juniors/premium-time ]new contract redefines the normal (i.e. not anti-social) hours[/url] to be 7am till 10pm Monday to Saturday. Effectively moving 30 hours a week from the [i]"these are anti-social so we will minimise how many you do in a week"[/i] bracket to the [i]"these are normal sociable working hours"[/i] bracket.
It also [url= http://bma.org.uk/working-for-change/in-depth-junior-and-consultant-contract/ddrb-recommendations-analysis-for-juniors/removal-of-vital-safeguards ]removes the financial penalties for making doctors work long hours[/url] and relies on Working Time Regulations instead. That means some doctors might only get one twenty minute break in an eleven hour shift!
And this is supposed to make things [i]better[/i] for patients??
I've got that award.
To be clear it's for a video game.
A likely story
Hahaha!
In fairness, the whole thing is part of a bigger plan anyway. The NHS is being set up to fail, and fail spectacularly by this government. They have already got various large foreign providers sniffing around several large trusts in England. This winter is going to be telling; we've barely had so much as a sniff of cold weather and the large acutes in my own region are raising their EMS levels (like defcon but for hospitals) already. This Government WANTS the NHS to crash and burn, so that it can be swept away in a justifiable and Daily Mail friendly manner and replaced b a much more profitable system. Then when the likes of Jeremy 'rhyming slang' Hunt exit stage [s]left[/s] [b]very much RIGHT[/b] they'll walk into cosy little high earning [s]directorships[/s] retirements. If anyone thought public sector pensions were unaffordable, wait and see how much the Tory establishment's pension plans are going to cost the country. It won't be measured in UKP, it will be measured in lives.
I'm going to go off on a tangent. Let's fast forward 4 years to a point where we no longer have a NHS and everything is private. Do you think that a) your tax will have been reduced because we no longer have to pay for the NHS?, b) private medical insurance will be cheaper than what you used to pay in extra tax?, c) you'll get world class health care without having to pay for it at the point of use? If the answers are anything other than a) No, b) No, and c) No then I advise that you get someone to check your spine for buttons.
Commonwealth fund have some nice data on this - we spend some of the lowest amounts per head in the developed world on healthcare. And overall get some of the best outcomes.
Too true, that's great money. How old are you ? And how does the banding thing work ? Based in London ?
My wifes on 37k, she's several months out of university and making coffee and filing paper work for bankers.....
I have a 23 year old colleague in my pharma company, who's a scientist with no degree and only five years of experience who is transferring internally to the US for a 94K dollar job.
If you think that's good money for years of your life wasted, you're on drugs or ****ing stupid. It's telling that on the one hand, the government is driving British doctors away whilst simultaneously trying to clamp down on immigration - as others have said, they are setting the NHS up to fail.
Commonwealth fund have some nice data on this - we spend some of the lowest amounts per head in the developed world on healthcare. And overall get some of the best outcomes.
Equally there are countries that spend less and get better outcomes - Cancer being a particularly good example of this.. despite the tens of £billions poured into "improving" cancer services in the English NHS the outcomes remain poor and in many cases extremely poor compared to other countries in the EU. So it's not just about the level of funding, it's about how the funding is allocated and spent.
Fair point but most of the Scandinavian countries mentioned spend far more than we do on healthcare.
Part of the outcomes is also patients choosing to ignore symptoms/not present - so cultural as well as economical. Screening for bowel cancer was not taken up by a lot of patients in UK trials.
Anyway no point on a daft argument, ironic for here.
The NHS is and remains an excellent system. Moving to a part of full insurance based scheme would be a disaster. There are few US based medics who rate their systems except the ones earning millions of dollars a year from it.
Fair point but most of the Scandinavian countries mentioned spend far more than we do on healthcare.
There are also areas the NHS does better than they do - palliative and end of life care for instance.
I'm five years qualified my basic salary is 32k I think plus 50% banding so I'm earning just under 50k - its not bad money
Too true, that's great money. How old are you ? And how does the banding thing work ? Based in London ?
Im 33 - i dont think a basic of 32k is that exceptional to be honest. The banding has been explained on here. Its only 50k because of the fact that we work nights and weekends plus 48h average per week.
Ive just got christmas rota through - im working christmas day, boxing day, the day after on 13 hour days plus nights new years eve plus night before. Guess how much extra i will be payed for that. Yup nil. I think we deserve our money.
Once more again though - we are not asking for a pay rise, just not a pay cut or worse hours.
The NHS is and remains an excellent system.
I agree - though you wouldn't know it reading some of the comments on that Torygraph article: the phrase "third world" appears a lot*, presumably from people who have never actually been to a third world country.
*(between the moaning about immigrants, foreign aid, foreign doctors, female doctors, "unnecessary" gender reassignment surgery etc)
Equally there are countries that spend less and get better outcome
Are there? The Torygraph article doesn't mention spending, only some examples of outcomes. Strangely, the countries against which it measures the UK are not consistent from chart to chart. Germany is included on some but not on others. Denmark is not mentioned at all, which may be because IIRC they don't have very good cancer stats.
The NHS is being wrecked by a combination of back-of-a-fag-packet ideology and political incompetence - and it will prove to be an expensive mistake, IMO. Hunt & co have a very deliberate agenda (e.g. their conflation of the junior contract with the "7 day NHS"), of course... but even so, it's astonishing how little grasp they appear to have on what [i]actually[/i] happens in acute care.
Apparently [url= http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/07/the-hunt-file-doctors-dossier-of-patients-put-at-risk-by-health-secretary ]the "Hunt Effect" is causing some patients to put off going to hospital at weekends[/url] because they believe it will be unsafe, there are no consultants, or that it simply isn't open.
Never mind, I'm sure his jolly NHS reforms can make those dangerous weekends just as safe as a midweek Wednesday:
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[url= http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4596/rr-31 ]Oh.[/url]
In that response in the BMJ from Dr Hall, he makes the interesting point that Jeremy Hunt first mentioned the 15% increased death rate in patients admitted on a Sunday a month before the research paper was even accepted for publication in the BMJ, and 2 months before it was actually published.
To quote Dr Hall:
...there continue to be a number of unanswered questions regarding how it was possible to indicate that this paper would be coming out in the BMJ – 1 month before it had actually been accepted for publication. Also how data within it were made available for prominent political use – 1 month before it was accepted for publication and 2 months ahead of actual publication. Also given the importance of this issue illustrated by David Cameron’s speech 4 months prior to publication, [b]it seems relevant to ask about any role that politicians had in commissioning and interpreting this analysis in the first place.[/b]
(my emphasis in bold)
Yep, and Mr Hunt clearly skipped the bit in the paper that said "to assume they are avoidable would be rash and misleading"
This is from the [url=
]"Letters for the NHS"[/url] Facebook feed, I thought it deserved a wider audience.
Read it and tell me that doctors are just being greedy:
Dear NHS,Death is an inevitable part of my working relationship with you.
Sometimes, dear NHS, there has been nothing I could do before it was too late. Nothing I could do would save the 14 year old girl brought in cold and blue having hung herself in her bedroom with no warning that she had reached the end of her abilities to cope with life. Nothing I could do would save the 8 week old baby whose meningococcal rash spread rapidly before my eyes as the antibiotics failed to take hold quickly enough to prevent her succumbing to overwhelming infection, just as her parents were getting to know her. Nothing I could do would save the 20 year old whose neck expanded in front of me as he bled to death from injuries sustained in a traffic accident. Nothing I could do would save the 65 year old who had worked hard in industry from the age of 14 but whose occupation slowly and irreversibly destroyed his lungs as he daily inhaled dust that would eventually result in him slowly suffocating. Nothing I could do would save my colleague who I was crash called to resuscitate after he chose to take his own life whilst on his nightshift. Nothing I could do would save my grandfather whose restricted mobility, due to injuries sustained as a Japanese prisoner of war, resulted in multiple blood clots that would eventually kill him. Nothing I could do would save many of the other patients I also cared for as a junior doctor and whose faces, at times, still haunt my dreams.
But despite their deaths, and my lack of ability to prevent them, you, dear NHS, fought and provided for each and every one of these patients and their families. You provided counselling and support for the parents of the 14 year old without asking if they could afford to pay for you to help them understand, and come to terms with, what had happened. You provided trained paramedics who administered what they hoped would be life saving antibiotics to the sick baby as soon as they arrived at the house, and who didn't ask for the parents’ credit card details first. You provided a helicopter to airlift the 20 year old to hospital in order to give him at least a chance of surviving, and a doctor to travel with him and look after him all the way - without wondering whether his family would have adequate insurance to cover it. You provided medications to try and keep the 65 year old comfortable as he desperately tried to suck air into his lungs, and oxygen to make it as easy as possible. You provided a specially trained nurse to talk him and his family through what was to come and to help them cope, and when they could no longer manage you provided a hospice bed and staff to reassure and comfort him and his family as he lived his last days. You never sent them a bill as they grieved his loss. You provided support to the family of the doctor who had given so much to you but could not take any more and ensured that his children were at least financially provided for as they faced a very different future. You sent district nurses regularly to tend to my grandfather's wounds and provided all the equipment and dressings he needed. When a large blood clot finally made him much sicker, you provided a bed in a community hospital just down the road where my grandmother could visit him daily. You enabled his GP, who knew him well, to continue to look after him locally rather than sending him somewhere where he knew no one. He passed away peacefully thanks to you.
But now, dear NHS, it is you who are dying and my heart breaks as much for you as it has for each one of my patients and their families. Just as so many of the dying days of my patients have kept me awake at night, now I lie there wondering just what else I can do to save you, and I'm struggling to come up with answers. I know my colleagues feel the same, but we keep on doing our best to fight for you because we, and the rest of the world, recognise just how good you are. Day to day our calls for help to resuscitate you seem to fall on deaf ears. No one seems to hear us or want to come to your aid. No one seems to want to provide the funding for the staff so desperately needed to keep you alive.
Some people seem determined to push you to your final breaking point by taking up your precious time with things that you were not designed to deal with - they make more and more inappropriate demands of you. Many even seem to want to let you die. But not in a good way. There is no hospice care for you. No planning for what will happen when you've gone - just a hope that you will slip away quietly without anyone noticing your demise and without any thought for 'what next?' Who will look after and take care of those you've left behind?
Dear NHS, it is you who now keeps me awake at night. It is you that I want to be able to save because you do so much for all of us even though we don't always acknowledge or recognise it. I love that you are indiscriminate in your care, providing for the last, the least and the lost in exactly the same way as you do for the great and powerful. I know we'll miss you when you're gone and I fear for my family, friends and patients in a world without you. But, dear NHS, I'm running out of ideas as to how to save you and I know I can't do it alone.
Dr Jo Kirkcaldy
Some people seem determined to push you to your final breaking point by taking up your precious time with things that you were not designed to deal with
Hmm, can't work out if she is referring to management, internal markets and budgeting... Or fertility treatment, cosmetic surgery and sex changes?
Or fertility treatment, cosmetic surgery and sex changes?
You mean treatments to improve people's health and well-being?
Or fertility treatment, cosmetic surgery and sex changes?
She could also, and I'd say this is more likely, mean the use of front line medical staff as a proxy for underfunded social and community care services and the traditional social structures which are eroding with time.
Some people seem determined to push you to your final breaking point by taking up your precious time with things that you were not designed to deal with
Hmm, can't work out if she is referring to management, internal markets and budgeting... Or fertility treatment, cosmetic surgery and sex changes?
If Dr Jo is who I think she is, then she'll be railing against people who are in her wards when they should be cared for at home. If the beds weren't blocked because of a lack of social care funding then the NHS would be going along just fine.
If the beds weren't blocked because of a lack of social care funding then the NHS would be going along just fine.
So we need to take money off the NHS and put it into social care? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Tell me, what do you think would be the reaction of the nurses unions and opposition parties if they did that?
lemonysam - Member
Or fertility treatment, cosmetic surgery and sex changes?
She could also, and I'd say this is more likely, mean the use of front line medical staff as a proxy for underfunded social and community care services and the traditional social structures which are eroding with time.
I agree. I ended up in A&E Monday night after my surgery, seems general anaesthetics don't get on, anyhoo.
In the next bed to me was a homeless woman. She was there when I was admitted, throughout the night all I could hear was her refusing treatment, obviously to get a bed for the night.
Eventually she left, but then no more than an hour later called an ambulance from the train station she was sleeping in and was re-admitted. The A&E staff were suitably frustrated and again struggled to get her to allow any examinations. I was discharged around 0400 and it was still ongoing.
But there is no other option at that time in the morning to assist them with situations like this.
ninfan - Member - Block User
So we need to take money off the NHS and put it into social care? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Why is it either/or?
so they are getting their unsocial hours moved towards the what the rest of sociaty have then. I start work at 4am and work every second weekend, I don't get extra for working unsocial hours.
Well, towards what you have.
Why is it either/or?
Because if he had said that then he couldn't keep the argument going.
so they are getting their unsocial hours moved towards the what the rest of sociaty have then
You think "the rest of society" regard 7am till 10pm Monday to Saturday as normal work hours?
Peak rush hour times would suggest otherwise.
I start work at 4am and work every second weekend
And do you honestly consider that "normal social hours"? Is your 3am commute pretty busy then?
You think "the rest of society" regard 7am till 10pm Monday to Saturday as normal work hours?
Peak rush hour times would suggest otherwise.
And do you honestly consider that "normal social hours"? Is your 3am commute pretty busy then?
no, its not "normal" social hours but I did accept the job knowing that. 9-5 isn't a standard working day anymore and sundays are no longer days of rest. When I worked in a lab I didn't get paid extra for working more hours or working weekends or having to do 24 hour experiments.
Sorry I just don't feel bad for junior doctors loosing a bit of cash.
p.s my morning commute is a 5 mins walk, I'm still sleeping at 3am 😉
I did accept the job [b]knowing[/b]
That is the keyword. If your employer changed your conditions so you worked longer for less money would you just say "Hey ho! It's Ok other people get paid just the same."
So we need to take money off the NHS and put it into social care? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.Tell me, what do you think would be the reaction of the nurses unions and opposition parties if they did that?
Depends how it's done to be honest. How do you suggest they do it?
My idea is something like this - take all of the funding away from Social Care that is related to providing care homes, residential homes, nursing homes, packages of care etc and give it to the NHS to spend. The NHS can then provide those services and not the private sector.
My feeling on this is that doctors provide an almost pivotal role in most of our lives and deserve our support in that. And part of that is the financial rewards. Yes they signed up for a very hard job requiring a lot of sacrifice but the payback was a certain level of monetary return.
Would i want a completely overworked, stressed out doctor who has had minimal sleep in the last 4 days making life and death decisions for me or my family. Not a chance. Reward them for exactly what the are and the service they provide.
We all seem to be pretty aware that the NHS is headed towards a level of privatisation, and it appears that nobody wants this. So what apart from voting for another political party can we do about it.Serious question.
Do we really want the type of care you get in the US where every single part comes with a very hefty price tag.
That is the keyword. If your employer changed your conditions so you worked longer for less money would you just say "Hey ho! It's Ok other people get paid just the same."
they change the numbers we have to achive all the time and they do change contracts. you have the choice to accept them or not. The doctors aren't getting paid less though are they as the basic wage isn't changing as its only the overtime and extra cash they can get is. It sucks but life sucks so if they don't like it change job or move country.
or, don't change the system to make it more sucky.
most other people are having to suffer pay cuts in real terms so what makes doctors any different?
