doctors on strike

I very much doubt Jeremy Hunt, or the Tories, have the bottle for Industrial action or a war with the NHS, they’ll just push them as far as they can and then back down just before they ballot to strike (assuming they don’t remove their right to strike first).

NB Is there a minimum age for posters on here? I’m guessing chewkw is either about 6 years old or a really poor troll…

FunkyDunc – Member

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 strikes, 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. [/quote]

Doctors work to rule? 😯

I learn something about human nature everyday.

As I said before I told you so …

footflaps – Member
NB Is there a minimum age for posters on here? I’m guessing chekw is either about 6 years old or a really poor troll…

Tell me what did I say wrong?

You either want more money or work less.

You decide. 🙄

I have a question for those people who think that there wouldnt be deaths and lots of them if junior doctors took industrial action. What exactly do you think junior doctors do?

Tell me what did I say wrong?

You either want more money

The changes would mean less money. They’re not considering industrial action for more.

That is why you are wrong. 🙂

[Louise Mensch] actually nauseates me

Me too, except for this:
http://unfashionista.com/2015/07/21/the-silence-of-the-shams-wcsj2015-falsely-reported-sir-tim-hunt/
in which for once in her miserable life she is correct.

I certainly haven’t seen anyone asking for more money, we are asking to not have our hours extended and to not have a pay cut. Hardly unreasonable.

benjamins11 – Member

I certainly haven’t seen anyone asking for more money, we are asking to not have our hours extended and to not have a pay cut. Hardly unreasonable.

Very good of you to be honest about your pay as well.
Not like those greedy firefighters that always quote net income.

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.

Haven’t we been round this one before, that “junior doctor” doesn’t mean what people think it means, i.e. “junior” can actually be pretty experienced?

Tell me what did I say wrong?

Completely miss understand the entire issue and then post drivel.

We have, but people didn’t seem to get that “Junior” equals everyone who is not a consultant.

Completely miss understand the entire issue and then post drivel.

Considering it’s chewy, I’d expect nothing less.

sbob – Member
The changes would mean less money. They’re not considering industrial action for more.

That is why you are wrong.

You mean they don’t want to work for less money? Really?

Or do you mean they want less work hour but maintain the rate of pay?

benjamins11 – Member

I certainly haven’t seen anyone asking for more money, we are asking to not have our hours extended and to not have a pay cut. Hardly unreasonable.

I see … if you ask not to extend your hour that means NHS will have to hire more doctors to cover for the hours.

If NHS can stretch your working hours they can save some money by not hiring more doctors (and all the benefits that go with doctors in terms of pay package etc) since their budget has always be scrutinised.

The problem is when you keep banging on your demand you will inevitably put your own profession in jeopardy. Think of it this way …

More doctors to cover for extra hours means more expenses for NHS to cover the cost of hiring.

More cost means more cuts which means something got to go.

If they cannot manage then it will only mean one thing … over supply of doctors and that means some have to go.

Yes, you might argue for more injection of funds from the govt but you have to remember Joe public has already be taxed to their hilt so demanding more means more tax etc … Joe public do not want that.

DrJ – Member

Completely miss understand the entire issue and then post drivel

Considering it’s chewy, I’d expect nothing less. [/quote]

Are you a medical Dr?

If Jeremy twunt gets his way I will potentially get a 30% pay cut for doing the same work.

All part of the privatisation plan.

anagallis_arvensis – Member
I support everyone’s right to strike.
Me too. Surely its a basic human right?

Not for some in this country I’m afraid.

There really is some very blinked people on here.

Good luck Dr’s I hope you win.

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 ?

To answer some of the above – no one is asking to work less hours. Most contracts are 48 hours a week – European maximum. Many European countries medics do 35-40.

The government want to remove financial penalties where docs are made to routinely work over 48 hours average.

No one is asking for less hours, just not a pay cut.

Many rotas already have up to 50% empty slots as no one is applying for jobs any more. The proposed changes will make this far worse.

I find all this very difficult. I simply ask, if your boss called you in on Monday and said I want you to work more hours for less money would you be happy?

There are many people who work hard and work long and antisocial hours. Doctors are by no means alone on that front. However, there is compelling evidence on making mistakes when you’re tired. The airline industry leads the way on evidence and enforcing working patterns. I guess because their tired mistakes kill hundreds of people at a time, themselves included. I have to live with my tired mistakes. And sometimes that’s tough.

I’ve been a junior doctor since 2000. I am an experienced professional. Also a 40 yr old mother of two. I have put in months of unpaid overtime over the years. Because I knew my patients needed my time. Sometimes it was holding a hand as someone dies without their loved ones round them. Sometimes it was the paperwork that needed done. And often in an evening I am doing mandatory evidence of competency or looking at new research or trying to work out why someone has unexplained symptoms. Or just crying about the tragedy we can’t fix. My job can be difficult. Really difficult. But again doctors are not alone in that.

But as far as I know, in the NHS we (all of us!) are the only ones working in a monopoly with little other options in this country. And I don’t know anyone else being asked to take such a paycut for more work. But I still don’t know what my answer would be if I am asked to strike. Because I’ll have to live with the consequences of that decision.

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.

Depends which system your referring to, the one that helps the general public, or the one that enable the government and their chums to siphon that money straight back out and into their own pockets?

They seem to be doing pretty well with one of those systems.

@ratadogs post mirrored pretty much exactly my brothers rant today about the trust he works at. Just for good measure they’ve automated the system for scheduling staffing. Got kids you need to pick up from school, don’t care!! You’re working whatever this thing says your working Folk have already left because it’s no longer possible to have young children and work at the trust resulting in more agency staff resulting in higher costs.

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.

What your wife thinks is obviously her opinion, but are there facts to back backup her opinion that overtime bans, working-to-rule, and withdrawing goodwill, or even withdrawing labour in non-urgent and non-emergency cases directly result in deaths?

What happened when senior and juniors doctors took industrial action with regards to non-urgent and non-emergency cases in 1975? Was there an actual increase in deaths?

Globally wide research of doctors strikes suggests that it does not necessarily result in more deaths:

All reported that mortality either stayed the same or decreased during, and in some cases, after the strike. None found that mortality increased during the weeks of the strikes compared to other time periods

While a lack of a spike in deaths when labour was withdrawn in non-urgent and non-emergency cases isn’t entirely surprising the drop in deaths is explained as surgery in non-urgent and non-emergency cases still carry risks.

Obviously this doesn’t mean that withdrawing labour in non-urgent and non-emergency cases isn’t a bad thing but it does seems to suggest that it doesn’t necessarily automatically equate with an increase in deaths.

I would be interested in facts actually showing that industrial action by doctors results in increased deaths before assuming automatically that it does.

And to put it all context and give it some meaning I would also like to see proof that tired and undervalued healthcare professionals with low morale don’t contribute to increases in preventable deaths.

How much are the government intending to cut doctors salary ? Is this a real cut to pre tax/pension salary ? Not seen anything in the news so trying to understand what it’s all about.

@ Mrs Graham S

Thanks you for all you do – and I dont just mean putting up with that cantankerous shit 😉

Tough decisions all round as to what to do as they are unlikely to listen to a polite request

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?

The other thing is the cost of a flight from Edinburgh to B’ham….£150-£200 tops? If there’s a course organised in Birmingham already then there are going to be other people going there. Presumably you haven’t got a trainer in Edinbrugh, a trainee in Edinburgh and they’ve both decided to have a jolly in Birmingham(!) for no good reason? So you could have a one-to-one session in Edinburgh, and pay the trainer to travel up there. Or pay for your own staff to travel and split the cost of the training course with the other ten people taking part.

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.

The problem is that “The NHS” doesn’t really exist, certainly not in the way that a lot people think it does. You’ve got the Dept of Health and then regional/local organisations below that. But a hospital trust in London has nothing to do (in a day to day, business admin sense) with a hospital trust anywhere else in the country, or any other hospital trusts in London, or a GP surgery. They’re all customers of one another(e.g. it’s too expensive for us to do procedure X so we send those patients down the road instead), but mostly it starts and ends there. Complaining that Trust X didn’t make a joint booking with Trust Y is like moaning that nPower and British Gas didn’t use the same room for their shareholder meetings.

Balls don’t be coming on here talking sense.

Lol. The one I’m married to? Yeah, that really is tough!

And I know lots of people work hard. And I don’t feel entitled to a fortune. We are well paid, but I don’t think it’s excessive for what we do. I work with a lot of really good people. The kind of people you’d want caring for you if you were ill. When my turn comes to be sick I don’t want them all in Oz!

@ Mrs Graham S

Thank you for all you do

To be fair I’m sure that given the opportunity Jeremy Hunt himself would be very happy to extend a personal thank you to MrsGrahamS. I suspect however that Mrs S might appreciate more than just a thank you card…….even a really nice one 🙂

You’d be surprised how much a thankyou card means. I have every single one still.

But I do quite like my pay packet too!

You’d be surprised how much a thankyou card means.

Yeah it’s pretty awesome when you get one but it doesn’t feed my kids.

in many hospitals more doctors present at the weekend means less in on another day so Wednesday becomes the new Sunday.

This is the bit I don’t get. I don’t see how weekend working can lead to a net benefit, it must just slightly redistribute the ‘poorer’ care. Unless they’re increasing staff by roughly 40pc to add two days full cover.

On the face of it, it’s mental.

All the pies – cut is to pre tax salary. Will vary post by post due to complexities of pay system but for most will be 10-30% cut.

To put that in perspective due to changes in hours etc I got better pay in first year post medschool in 2002 than our juniors do now 13 years later. I worked crazy unsafe hours so some things have improved and pay is still better than many being fair.

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.

My fiancee is a manager at a doctors recruitment firm. They have people on their books from all over the world and are one of the biggest out there but often struggle to fill positions in places like Norwich or Hull. London? Fine. Leeds? No worries, but there’s not people falling over themselves to go off the beaten track.

I 100% support the Dr’s right to take industrial action. Having been at the sharp end of the governments austerity hammer and had to put up with the lies and deceit spewed by Tory ministers I am far more inclined to believe the Dr’s rather then the current grinning idiot given the NHS to destroy.

The surgeon that operated on my boy’s heart when he was three month old and who saved his life used to look in on him around 11pm, only to be back with his head round the door by 7am the next day. Whatever he gets paid is not enough.

Not like those greedy firefighters that always quote net income.

I hope you’re joking?

I hope you’re joking?

No, they actually quoted post tax net figures when trying to garner support.
Very deceitful.
Campaign for better pay, sure. But be honest about it.

Very deceitful

In that, they are lying, they actually get more? Or in a ‘this is the actual relevant amount that they take home’ way? Mildly creative possibly, deceitful hardly. If you want to see deceitful, try reading government press releases about how much YOU get paid when you are involved in a pay dispute with them.

Small example; a 1% per annum pay deal over three years being called a 3% deal. UTTER BULLSHIT, when it suits them.

*not a firefighter, BTW.

No, they actually quoted post tax net figures when trying to garner support.
Very deceitful.
Campaign for better pay, sure. But be honest about it.

Are you talking about quoting take home pay? If so, that’s what we take home so what we have to spend. How is that deceitful?

Anyway, what period are you on about? The only time we’ve been on strike for pay since the 70’s was 2002/3.

Most people compare/quote gross salaries, not take-home.

It’s hardly deceitful and unnecessary on a thread about doctors. For the record I’ve been doing the job for nearly 17 years and my gross is 29k with take home of £1500 every 4 weeks.

The Doctors deserve all they get and more. It makes me sad that people prefer to be envious of others and join in the race to the bottom rather than support people who do a great job and are prepared to stick up for themselves.

29k seems pretty good considering: http://viz.co.uk/day-life-fireman/

😆

1. The bottom line there is not much money going around in NHS so make it what you will but something got to give.

2. You lot have such bad management team (ZM bureaucrats) if they run their own business they would be bankrupted within a short period of time.

3. Stop blaming this govt or that govt coz the entire system/structure requires massive overhaul and all of them messed up one time or another.