doctors on strike

On Sunday Morning Live Louise untermensch is claiming the public would not support a strike by junior doctors, is the right wing irrelevant shill correct?
I support everyone’s right to strike.

Good on them for striking. Declaring black is white does not make it so Jeremy Hunt.

hateful little Tory mouthpiece. She actually nauseates me.

She’s irrelevant, who cares?

With the exception of the fire service, the public seem to get the huff with anyone going on strike from the second that they’re personally inconvenienced.

The fire service only get away with it because people’s houses don’t burn down with any kind of regularity.

I don’t see that it matters much what the public thinks. If the public wants junior doctors who work and accept conditions without complaining then the public shouldn’t elect a government that takes the piss. It’s not rocket science.

The public has been pretty successfully hoodwinked by the BMA’s latest piece of cynical campaigning.

Contrary to what’s being reported Junior Doctors aren’t getting a pay cut or being asked to work 70 hour weeks – they are simply being asked to accept the same working patterns as Nurses and Paramedics. They will still work 40 hours a week but will have to work one weekend in four as part of contracted hours rather than on the voluntary basis that makes no sense at all in health system that’s supposed to work 7 days a week. The principle of a contract that covers 7 day rostering was something that was first accepted by the BMA in 1999 but 16 years later they are still using delay tactics to stop it.

I suspect I would support them.
How about a reduction in the £100kpa paid to GPs to compensate?
Personally I’d have introduced a tax levy, along the lines of the student loan repayment, on all graduates regardless of when they graduated to ensure a level playing field. They’d have bleated but I wouldn’t care 🙂

Just5minutes – please do explain, I must have been reading the wrong stuff…. along with a lot of other folk

Unfortunately it is very difficult for doctors to strike, if they do people will die

I will support them.

We wont loose them, there’s thousands upon thousands if them coming through the system every year because it’s still relatively well paid and prestigious.

I can just see the public supporting them as they stand ptside their hospitals with people ill inside, whilst even under the current pay deal, they earn vastly more than the national average.

Long hours? Boohoo, join the club. Got to work the weekend? Me too.

They all moan about the amount of debt they have too, tossers, so do all students, at least they get a bloody guaranteed job at the end of it. Unless they fail the course.

I can just see the public supporting them as they stand ptside their hospitals with people ill inside, whilst even under the current pay deal, they earn vastly more than the national average.

Do they really aye?

So they are still in training, paid a decent basic wage plus overtime, will earn a very nice wage when fully qualified in their chosen field, could work in private health on the side.

Everyone says they will go abroad, but we seem to be awash with medical professionals from all over the world wanting to work in the NHS.

The world will be a better place once we are rid of the entitled generation.

Aren’t senior medical professionals part of the entitled generation?

I feel for those poor farmers working anti-social hours too. Why do people fall sick at the weekends, bloody inconsiderate?

Aren’t senior medical professionals part of the entitled generation?

To be fair, having seen them at work, they’re entitled to be. Have you ever seen someone implant electrodes deep inside a persons brain and pretty much instantly take them from being unable to do anything to walking out the door a couple of days later? I have, and the medical staff dont get paid anything like enough.

Indeed people don’t want to pay for their services properly. Tough when you start from this position

We wont loose them, there’s thousands upon thousands if them coming through the system every year because it’s still relatively well paid and prestigious.

Bollocks. You may go in thinking that, but make it out the other side of med school believing you’re in for a life of easy money and prestige and you won’t be taking a job with the NHS.

Working weekends isn’t the issue, that’s obviously necessary and long hours are part of the game, but earning so little for the trouble is just going to drive them away.

It’s s easy to get a job anywhere on the planet these days and they’ll get paid far, far better for fewer hours.

If we continue to treat the NHS as a drain and not as the UKs greatest asset, then I will be first to join the revolution.

Let them leave then, we all know the UK is one of the most desirable places to live, people paddle here of on old doors and risk death dodging trains to get here. There will always be people wanting to be doctors and wanting to live in the UK.

The “They’ll all go to New Zealand” argument is a nonsense, some might, most won’t.

Doctors life cycle-school-uni-state employment. A lot of them never work part time jobs either and just rack up massive debts instead. The stuff that they do in the NHS boggles my mind it’s so wasteful. My mums a nurse and they’re flying her from Edinburgh to Birmingham for a trainign course. **** insane waste of money, it could easily be done on site, but hey, who cares, the government is paying aye?

d Junior Doctors aren’t getting a pay cut or being asked to work 70 hour weeks – they are simply being asked to accept the same working patterns as Nurses and Paramedics. They will still work 40 hours a week but will have to work one weekend in four as part of contracted hours rather than on the voluntary basis that makes no sense at all in health system that’s supposed to work 7 days a week. The principle of a contract that covers 7 day rostering was something that was first accepted by the BMA in 1999 but 16 years later they are still using delay tactics to stop it.

This is so much bollocks that I don’t even know where to start…

1) it is a pay cut – it is
2) junior doctors work almost identical working patterns to nurses and paramedics, except that we tend to work longer hours on average per week
3) I have never seen a contract of 40 hours/week – the vast majority of doctors’ rotas are 48h average weeks (my last official hours monitoring was 49.1hrs/wk, which, incidentally, is illegal)
4) junior doctors already work weekends – a typical rota will have 2 weekends every 10 weeks i.e. 1:5 weeks have a full working week, then 3×12 hours over the weekend, then another full working week before a day off
5) there is nothing voluntary in a junior doctors contract

My mums a nurse and they’re flying her from Edinburgh to Birmingham for a trainign course. **** insane waste of money

I used to work at a conference centre which the NHS used for training.
They would frequently make two different bookings for the same course, which they would of course have to pay for.

Criminal waste of money, and a good example of where money could be saved without impacting on people’s wages.

I feel for those poor farmers working anti-social hours too. Why do people fall sick at the weekends, bloody inconsiderate?

That’s the sort of ridiculous comment which I would expect to see on a letters page of a tabloid newspaper.

Contrary to what’s being reported Junior Doctors aren’t getting a pay cut or being asked to work 70 hour weeks – they are simply being asked to accept the same working patterns as Nurses and Paramedics. They will still work 40 hours a week but will have to work one weekend in four as part of contracted hours rather than on the voluntary basis that makes no sense at all in health system that’s supposed to work 7 days a week. The principle of a contract that covers 7 day rostering was something that was first accepted by the BMA in 1999 but 16 years later they are still using delay tactics to stop it.

You are either jeremey Hunt or a fiction writer with limited skill

I support everyone’s right to strike. Happily support junior doctors.

I happily support the right to strike, and doctors do amazing work.

But they do earn a lot of money compared to the average, certainly at higher levels. They deserve it though.

The government needs to realise that the money and changes they keep throwing at the NHS are not making the systems work any better, and making junior doctors scapegoats won’t help.

The public also need to realise that keeping our ageing population alive with a decent quality of life is going to need some serious funding as well. Closing corporate tax loopholes may not cover it – if that ever happens.

2 junior doctors on research fellowships at my place have aaccepted places in Australia in the last month, neither of them wanted to leave, but Jeremy hunts attacks have really struck a nerve and now time spent doing research no longer counts toward their increments even with extra for on call and clinics they can’t make it pay, with having families.
Real shame is that these guys are among the best, ultimately becoming specialists in their fields – oncology in this case, but I’m sure it’s the same acctoss all disciplines

It should perhaps be remembered that junior doctors in England are being balloted on whether to stage industrial action, this does not necessarily mean strike action.

Industrial action can also mean overtime bans, working-to-rule, and withdrawing goodwill. I imagine that the NHS depends massively on the goodwill of healthcare workers that work within it.

And if it did indeed come to withdrawing labour junior doctors could easily restrict that to non-urgent and non-emergency cases.

The suggestion above that “people will die” if junior doctors strike is unsubstantiated imo.

Furthermore I suspect that low morale and tired and undervalued healthcare workers is more likely to cause preventable deaths within the NHS than any strike action.

By taking a stance to protect wages and conditions junior doctors are taking a stance for all of us imo.

I support everyone’s right to strike.

Me too. Surely its a basic human right?

I’d take issue with the comments above aling the lines of being paid to train. Our ‘training’ takes many years yes but whilst we are training we are running the hospitals as well. You would have been very thankful for this ‘trainee’ intubating you or giving your wife an epidural whilst in labour.I’m currently working my 72nd hour of 76 this week, on day 7 you try and tell me that I have just been training that whole time.

For all of that I would earn more per hour if I was a manager at McDonalds.

Purely playing devils advocate, why aren’t you a manager at McDonald’s instead?

because he’s a doctor?

But if he’d be better paid at McDonald’s, why is he still being a doctor?

Please see my other comments above supporting them before flaming me. I’m expecting an answer that will convince some of the naysayers how great our doctors are btw.

Because I like being a doctor, because I trained for 5 years at medical school and then some afterwards, because I think it’s worthwhile. It’s not about the money it never was, we get paid fine but only because we work bloody long hours. If Jeremy twunt gets his way I will potentially get a 30% pay cut for doing the same work. That’s just not fair.

I think given the responsibility and the training we have we deserve a reasonable wage. How many people go into doing something in their daily job thinking if I **** something up I might kill this person, I think that everytime I give an anaesthetic to someone.

A reply like that!

According to the Telegraph once you factor in allowances etc junior doctors can earn £40k initially – £56 in the later stages of training. If correct it seems pretty good pay to me.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11887308/How-much-are-junior-doctors-paid-and-why-are-they-threatening-to-strike.html

If it isn’t correct what are typical salaries including allowances/overtime etc?

But if he’d be better paid at McDonald’s, why is he still being a doctor?

If you need to be told you wouldnt understand. Its like me being a teacher in the state sector when I could get paid more and have less shit to deal with in the private sector.

OK so basic starting salary is I think 23, not 40. That’s based on you doing 37hours per week, you do 48 normally plus nights and weekends so you get a banding. That’s either a 30-50 uplift on that, as a first year doctor you earn around 30k.

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 but if I worked the same hours as a manager in mcD’s ( not that I’m criticising them) I would earn more.

To get up to 56k you are at the very top of the junior doctor tree I.e. nearly a consultant probably 12 years post medical school, a very experienced and competent doctor. The most senior doctor in a hospital at night for instance.

This is so much bollocks that I don’t even know where to start…

ou are either jeremey Hunt or a fiction writer with limited skill

I entirely agree.

I am not sure how much goodwill exists towards the government but if some can be found it is highly likely to be withdrawn. As a senior medic trying to keep a hospital staffed, I am a lot less worried about strike action and more about the permanent withdrawal of labour. Interesting piece by Sarah Wollaston in the Telegraph stating that her daughter, son in law and 8 of their friends are helping staff an Australian A&E where all the medical staff are British trained. Not an isolated example and a disaster for you the taxpayer on a number of levels not least that supply and demand in this country mean that a significant body of doctors, nurses and other specialists are choosing to work as agency staff and get paid 2.5 to 3 times the going rate for the job. The individual can thus work six months of the year and still finish up with more in the bank but from the NHS perspective that means paying two people bonus rates to do one job. The more people resign and join agencies the more vacancies we have to fill. Two thirds of the NHS overspend of 930million just announced for Q1 is said to be agency staff costs and the announcement came some 4-6 weeks later than usual and coincidentally just after the Conservative party conference.

Despite much evidence to the contrary I refuse to believe that Hunt and Cameron are so stupid that they do not know that the contractual opt out from weekend working that they are so keen to get in the public domain as a possible cause for the current ills of the health service only applies to elective work ( i.e. not emergencies ), isn’t invoked by the vast, vast majority of doctors ( one newspaper got quite excited that they had found a couple and then had to publish a correction when they realised that the doctors concerned had opted out of the 48 hour European Working Time Directive and not weekend working, in other words they had opted to work longer hours not shorter) and is irrelevant because in many hospitals more doctors present at the weekend means less in on another day so Wednesday becomes the new Sunday. In fact the limiting step even at curent rates of cover is the availability of other services inside and outside the hospital i.e. investigations, social services, care home beds etc. Again all those services are struggling to provide 5 day care. Finally, the reason given for the concentration on beefing up 7 day care, namely hospitals are more dangerous at the weekend may not be correct anyway. There is a higher death rate at the weekends but this is in part or in whole because less patients are admitted for routine operations at the weekend and in some areas end of life care is less available in the community at the weekends so such patients get admitted to hospital instead.

The only good news I can scrape together for you the taxpayer is that an ongoing payfreeze means that comparatively speaking NHS staff are getting far less well paid than we were and that significant rises in the pension contributions, despite the NHS scheme already being in profit, mean that we happy campers now make a 2-3 billion contribution to the treasury each year over and above our taxes. A bit of careers advice, be a judge as judges now make a 3% contribution for the same pension that doctors pay 13%. Peter Cook was right all the time.

Personally speaking I have no intention of leaving but Mrs Ratadog is a Kiwi so I have my options covered.

My mums a nurse and they’re flying her from Edinburgh to Birmingham for a trainign course. **** insane waste of money

Your mother is either very high up the foodchain, a very specialist nurse, or you’re talking pish. Which one is it?

Strike! Strike! Strike!

More! More! More!

I want more! More money! More money!

More! More! More!

Money! Money! Money!

Sort you lot I have rights!

Rights to more!

More money!

😯

The suggestion above that “people will die” if junior doctors strike is unsubstantiated imo.

My wife is a hospital doctor, and she thinks that if doctors strike, even just for a couple of hours people would die. Even work to rule would put lives in danger. The NHS isn’t swimming with doctors and already relies on doctors doing way beyond what they are contracted to do.

People need to get over the negative spin put out by government and press.

As on a previous thread, if you want lower paid doctors because you are not happy with the money they earn, fair enough, but just expect mediocre care as the highly intelligent, high calibre candidates won’t be attracted to the profession