Junior Doctors Strikes

[Dr House]

How do you guys feels about the doctors going on strike?

For contexed this is what they are paid:

Grade	Years post med school	Pay per hour
FY1	1	£14.9
FY2	2	£16.31
ST1/2	3,4	£19.30
ST3/4/5	5,6,7	£24.45
ST6+	8+	£28
Consultant	From year 8 to 10	£42

Feels they generally pay them self:
GMC, Insurance, BMA, royal collage £2k
Courses or exams average £1k per year

Most have £80k + debt now

for the first 8 to 10 years you get moved around all over the uk and may move hospitals a couple of times a year

The stranded working week is 48h, less than that and you are part-time.
This is on a shift pattern, so you are doing 48h a week with a combination of nights, days, and twilights (often finishing at 2am)


They use the term junior doctor to devalue the position of these doctors, a “junior” is anyone that is not a consultant. Some never become consultants, a “junior” could be the one operating on you, they could be running a cardiac arrest, or trauma calls, they will almost always be the one doing emergency procedures in A&E.



The pension is not bad, but its not like it was, you still pay 14.5% of your pay into the pension, and it's not a final salary like it was before, it is career average so if your average is low your pension is crap also.


Also it's not a world of private work after you become a consultant, very few actually do any private work, and it is not as lucrative as you may think after costs and insurance.

 

[tamzzy]

Thinking about becoming a full time locum SPR. Just need to find out if I can still pay into the NHS pension if I locum through the Trust bank (I think I still can)

 

[BUDFORCE]

Should have become a greedy property landlord, government look after them.

 

[Broken Hope]

Doctors definitely don't get paid enough considering the hours and responsibilities.

 

[Dr House]

Thinking about becoming a full time locum SPR. Just need to find out if I can still pay into the NHS pension if I locum through the Trust bank (I think I still can)

you can but unless you are ED or ITU there may not be enough work in just one trust.

 

[tamzzy]

you can but unless you are ED or ITU there may not be enough work in just one trust.

ICU/anaesthesia, and a bit of med SPR on the side too
The locum availability page is just full to the brim lol

 

[hillbilly2]

So most of them are on less than a train driver :/

 

[Feek]

Also it's not a world of private work after you become a consultant, very few actually do any private work, and it is not as lucrative as you may think after costs and insurance.

You could still afford to work over 550 hours, not get paid for months and when you finally got paid, donate the earnings to charity because you’d given up on getting it. Wasn’t that estimated at over £30K?

Seems like it’s pretty lucrative to me.

 

[tamzzy]

So most of them are on less than a train driver :/

Correct. The headline pay is just higher because we do 48h a week (up to 56h if EWTD opt out).
Hourly rates are as above

 

[Dr House]

ICU/anaesthesia, and a bit of med SPR on the side too
The locum availability page is just full to the brim lol

ah you are good then.

My barrister charges 3 months of take home pay of a ST3 for a single day in court.

 

[Deleted User 234324]

A consultant in the US would be on nearly 2.5k times what they would be in the NHS. Seen salary ranges upwards of $250k

 

[Dr House]

You could still afford to work over 550 hours, not get paid for months and when you finally got paid, donate the earnings to charity because you’d given up on getting it. Wasn’t that estimated at over £30K?

Seems like it’s pretty lucrative to me.

That was 2 months locum I did between jobs, but 550 was a hell of a lot of work to do in 2 months.

 

[Buffman]

If its a defined benefit pension and similar to civil service (1/30th or so per year you put in) then it's pretty damn good pension.

Yes the pay is pretty mediocre but id say bigger issue is that the hours sound absolutely awful.

Personally I wouldn't do it, but then again I would struggle to pass the exams (and I did a masters degree in engineering).

 

[Dr House]

If its a defined benefit pension and similar to civil service (1/30th or so per year you put in) then it's pretty damn good pension.

Yes the pay is pretty mediocre but id say bigger issue is that the hours sound absolutely awful.

Personally I wouldn't do it, but then again I would struggle to pass the exams (and I did a masters degree in engineering).

The bigger problem is passing the exams you have to take while working a 48h week and having a family. When you are a student in med school you can sit and study 12h a day if you need to

 

[GreatAuk]

I think striking is justified. More on the basis of retention clearly being a problem rather than a subjective opinion on how much Dr's are 'worth'. We don't have enough Dr's and aren't retaining as many as we should be, so the 'why don't you quit if it's so bad and they aren't paying you enough' point has actually been reached in many cases. We should pay more to prevent this. I'd imagine that some of the brightest candidates for medicine might be rethinking things too as conditions and pay decline, so we might well end up with slightly worse quality doctors over time too as things change.

I'd say fixing conditions should really be the priority for retention and staff satisfaction etc, but that's a long term problem, and in the short term a pay rise is all that will work...

The only reason the system hasn't collapsed is that cheaper immigrant labour can sustain it.

I think other comparable countries like France and Germany pay a bit more than we do (not sure how conditions and duties compare though Tbf), so it wouldn't be unreasonable to pay a bit more.

 

[Freefaller]

So most of them are on less than a train driver :/

And train driving is no way as skilled as a medical doctor especially since the majority of trains are semi automatic now or at the very least GOA 1... It's ridiculous.

And you don't have to train anywhere near to the level of a medical doctor.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

If its a defined benefit pension and similar to civil service (1/30th or so per year you put in) then it's pretty damn good pension.

Yes the pay is pretty mediocre but id say bigger issue is that the hours sound absolutely awful.

Personally I wouldn't do it, but then again I would struggle to pass the exams (and I did a masters degree in engineering).

It's nice but its not free, you pay in over 14% of your salary. If people in the private sector paid in that level, their pensions would be a lot closer in size than they are.

 

[LostCorpse]

So most of them are on less than a train driver :/

i'll add a lot of them get double their base pay because they do over time. so the figure isnt truely representative.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

This won't be a problem once striking is banned.

:-/

 

[dowie]

How do you guys feels about the doctors going on strike?

I don't like the fact they're going on strike but I do think they're underpaid.

The stranded working week is 48h, less than that and you are part-time.

That's odd, and not true for two close relatives in two different NHS trusts both at consultant level, they are/were 40 hours a week.

AFAIK 48 hours is the maximum you're supposed to work on average, it's not the defining characteristic of "full-time" as far as the NHS is concerned.

Part of the issue is that it's a monopoly, like you say private work is available but isn't exactly standard, sadly plenty of private work seems to be contracting for agencies who in turn are contracted by the NHS!

Part of the issue is also the professional medical associations, they have a hand in the restrictions on the number of med schools and nursing student places IIRC.

The other issue in terms of time for the likes of A&E is GPs not working full time, I think every GP in my local practice is part-time, 3 days a week including the two partners! When people can't get GP appointments they turn up in A&E/Urgent care and waste the time of the nurses doing triage before being sent (hopefully) to one of the GPs they have working at the hospital for this reason but sadly also sometimes to some junior Dr or med student who would otherwise be helping clear the backlog of actual emergency cases and minor injuries.

Another issue is the admin side of the NHS, it's a total **** show at times! Personal anecdote:

Spoiler

I've got an issue at the moment where my GP didn't request some test (which should have been requested as standard) as part of a referral for another test, rather than just someone at the hospital adding it on they rejected the referral and didn't inform me until I phoned up to ask if I was going to get an appointment soon. I pointed out that I had actually had that same test in another part of the hospital so could they use that, got a "computer says no/it's on a different system" response. Had to book another GP appointment to be referred again (for the missing test), then asked if that was OK, could I have the original appointment I was referred for now, please? Nope... I then need to take the results back to the GP and have him do a whole new version of the referral he originally did with the test result attached to it... even though that test result just came from the department he's referring me to... so two additional GP appointments that could have gone to someone else were wasted and two additional referrals were required all because of some admin nonsense.

I think perhaps some sort of co-pay system needs to be introduced re: A&E, like a charge of £25 or £50 or something (applied as a benefits deduction too as you know full well who a lot of the time wasters are), you'd soon discourage the people who can't be bothered to wait for a GP appointment, it's disgraceful that stroke and heart attack patients are waiting in Ambulance queues.

We should probably look at more privatisation too, some sort of single-payer insurance model, seems to work for plenty of European countries yet Brits have an overly emotional attachment to the NHS and some dumb, default reactionary positon that any suggestion of privitisation = you must want the US model.