doctors on strike

but I can’t help but feel that making it worse for those people is not the way forward.

You’ll just have to face up to the fact that being a Tory isn’t for you 😉

Funny how they always seem to be the people that are squeezed time and time again, shat on, abused, and taken for granted.

And the common theme?

And the common theme?

They all provide world class service and extraordinary value for money?

I hope they don’t strike, I hope they won’t need to.

Funny how they always seem to be the people that are squeezed time and time again, shat on, abused, and taken for granted.

Still at least they have a job for life to grumble about and probably a pension pot at the end. Compare them to the poor folk at Redcar recently.

Still at least they have a job for life to grumble about and probably a pension pot at the end. Compare them to the poor folk at Redcar recently.

I don’t get the relevance of this to the argument about Doctor’s new contracts? There is always someone worse off, somewhere in the world.

There is always someone worse off, somewhere in the world.

You can start off with me!
Long, unsociable hours for the bare minimum of pay.
But do I begrudge what doctors are paid?

Do I ****.

Still at least they have a job for life to grumble about and probably a pension pot at the end. Compare them to the poor folk at Redcar recently.

It’s not remotely fair to compare the private sector, apparently.

Imagine being in so much pain that death seems more preferable.

Then imagine tht the pain will never go away and the only alternative IS death.

Then imagine that someone, for a fee, can take that pain away.

How much would you pay them?

The market rate.

I’m astonished that people still bandy round this phrase ‘public support’. Can anyone name a strike or industrial action since WW2 that got what the Mail etc describe as ‘public support’. The public’s opinion is not sought after, the mass media attempts to form it, and this partly explains the media shock/horror at the groundswell of support for Corbyn.
It saddens me when people who can hardly be described as major beneficiaries of the system come out and parrot what they’ve been told against other sections of workers. The junior doctors have my support. Any A* economists heard of wages drift?

Still at least they have a job for life to grumble about and probably a pension pot at the end.

Well that is not true at all.

After uni doctors do Foundation Yrs 1 & 2 (a 2yr contract), and then begin to specialise in what they want to do. There used to be quite a few Specialist Training posts about that took you from ST1 to ST8. These are almost none existant now.

Instead doctors have to apply for jobs every year to get them through their training years. This can be living up and down the country for year after year.

At the end of it you are then trained but dont have a job, you then have to apply for consultant jobs with no guarantee of getting one.

How many other careers do you know where your employer routinely makes you relocate homes every year, or do 4 hr commutes a day after working 12 hours?

At the end of the day, we are all going to have to contribute more to our health care directly. As soon as this is accepted the quicker we can arrive at some working solutions. In the meantime, we just keep going around in vicious circles…..

BillMC – Member

I’m astonished that people still bandy round this phrase ‘public support’. Can anyone name a strike or industrial action since WW2 that got what the Mail etc describe as ‘public support’. The public’s opinion is not sought after……

Well said.

Its not a remotely fair comparison as management consultants are in the private sector and wages controlled by market forces.

Isn’t it funny how it’s not fair to compare when talking about increasing public service wages to private levels (or at least maintaining the gap) but is absolutely fair to compare when talking about public service Vs private pensions.

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.

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 new contract redefines the normal (i.e. not anti-social) hours to be 7am till 10pm Monday to Saturday. Effectively moving 30 hours a week from the “these are anti-social so we will minimise how many you do in a week” bracket to the “these are normal sociable working hours” bracket.

It also removes the financial penalties for making doctors work long hours 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 better 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 left very much RIGHT they’ll walk into cosy little high earning directorships 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 **** 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.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11490398/Cancer-survival-rates-in-UK-are-a-shameful-decade-behind-Europe.html

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 actually happens in acute care.

Apparently the “Hunt Effect” is causing some patients to put off going to hospital at weekends 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:

Oh.

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, it seems relevant to ask about any role that politicians had in commissioning and interpreting this analysis in the first place.

(my emphasis in bold)