Junior Doctors Strikes

Buffman said:
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.

Perksonally I wouldn't do it, but then again I would struggle to pass the exams (and I did a masters degree in engineering).
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It is defined benefit and currently causing chaos with annual allowance breaches on pension growth (it was bad before but its CPI linked so is now ridiculous). Consultants are having to drop PAs/dip in and out of the pension scheme or scheme pay the charges - which then means you're paying interest on a loan to pay a fee on pension growth which is essentially imaginary.

It's also up to the individual to sort the fees on as there's no automated system for figuring out if you're liable or not and it takes months to get your pension figures and try to understand the rules. So now many end up spending a few thousand on an accountant to tell you how much to pay.
 
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Dr House said:
agree on the working conditions but you know the JD's are paid about the same or a little less than the nurses and we all agree they are underpaid
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IIRC a Nurse starts on £20.2k to 54k for a consultant nurse, there are other positions that pay more but aren't strictly nursing (they seem very specialised?). My Mum was a nurse for 30+ years and she certainly never earnt close to what a Doctor with the same amount of experience would.


A JD would start at £29.3k, or about 45% more than a nurse. You can't really compare an "average" nurse salary to that of a first year doctor.
 
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Would a pay increase even be enough? A 10% pay hike may attract a few more doctors to the job (or change the minds of those planning on leaving) but they're still left with a job demanding lots of hours.

It's similar to the reasons the nurses are striking, I know they're asking for pay increases, but they're also trying to shine some light on the numbers of nurses not being recruited etc.

Interestingly the number of full time doctors in the NHS/HCHS has doubled from 2003 to 2021. Yet the UK population has only grown by 12.7% in those same years. So we now actually have more doctors per citizens in recent years than the early noughties. What is pretty complex to find out is whether as a nation we've become sicker from 2003 to 2021 and require more of a doctor's time than in the past. - an aging population might be a key factor here.
 
BUDFORCE said:
Should have become a greedy property landlord, government look after them.
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maybe the big fish but as an owner of a single rental property (my wife's flat before we met) it isn't the case generally.

btw personally I think doctors take home pay seems ok....... but their hrs are absolutely not .... rather than up their salary I would cut their hrs on the same pay. less burnout,. better quality of care (they can't be operating at 100% effiency if exhausted) and a better work life balance would surely keep more of them from quitting.

how to get to the point where that is doable... I have no idea.
 
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lol my poor sister scrimping on lowly Dr's wages scraping by in her million pound London house...

Compared with my poor mum, still working as a nurse at 70...
 
Correct me if im wrong but people dont go into being a doctor or a nurse to earn megabucks, isn't it more for a rewarding human experience, say, rather than pushing numbers around on a screen for 7h a day?

There's more to life than zeros on a bank statement, although it certainly is a part of it.

Striking Doctors? Given my perhaps naive opinion on the reason why people enter the career in the first place, i would think its a major conflict of morals/interests for a Dr. to go on strike, people will die, simples. (Turkish meerkat voice.) That power shouldn't be used as a bargaining chip.

Ive had some truly awful contact with doctors and tbh lost some respect for them as the mythical figures i held them to be say 20 years ago. Glorified search engines, and some terrible decisions which ive had reversed by a more experienced 2nd opinion.

Yeah Doctors... "Junior" doctors probably shouldnt be worked to the bone... but overtime exists. I dont think ive ever met a poor doctor....
 
Health staff (NHS) are getting smashed at the moment. Everything is bad, and getting measurably worse.

I think striking health staff risk the same reaction as the firemen got- people will lose sympathy.
 
Efour said:
Correct me if im wrong but people dont go into being a doctor or a nurse to earn megabucks, isn't it more for a rewarding human experience, say, rather than pushing numbers around on a screen for 7h a day?

There's more to life than zeros on a bank statement, although it certainly is a part of it.

Striking Doctors? Given my perhaps naive opinion on the reason why people enter the career in the first place, i would think its a major conflict of morals/interests for a Dr. to go on strike, people will die, simples. (Turkish meerkat voice.) That power shouldn't be used as a bargaining chip.

Ive had some truly awful contact with doctors and tbh lost some respect for them as the mythical figures i held them to be say 20 years ago. Glorified search engines, and some terrible decisions which ive had reversed by a more experienced 2nd opinion.

Yeah Doctors... "Junior" doctors probably shouldnt be worked to the bone... but overtime exists. I dont think ive ever met a poor doctor....
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They may go into it wanting to help people, but that doesn't mean they don't want or deserve a reasonable level of income so they can at least have the same take home pay after their loans etc are paid for as say a totally unqualified person can get working in a random job that doesn't require 5 years of training.
Some of the hourly wages that doctors are getting are worse than you can get doing shift work where you're not seeing people die/having people die on you regardless of how well you do (let alone, god forbit you make a mistake). IIRC my nephew at 26 is earning around what a junior doctor with 5 years of medical school and tens of thousands of debt is, and he's working in a factory warehouse type job.
From what's been mentioned above, one of my local supermarkets offers a better hourly rate than some of the doctors rates, and it's an actual hourly rate without unpaid overtime and the ability for the staff to head home on the dot not have to hang around because a manager has messed up the schedule and their licence being at risk if they don't (IIRC doctors and nurses can't simply head home when their notional shift is up until the patients are handed over etc).

One of the reasons they're striking is for patient safety, the government has allowed the NHS to become so understaffed that it's dangerous in some instances, and the hours they are working should be illegal as you get doctors making literal life or death decisions when they've worked for longer and with less rest than is legal for a truck driver, let alone say a pilot (decades of studies and lessons from accidents have shown the sort of hours junior doctors are often working are actively dangerous, hence the really strict rules for flying and even just driving trucks).

The governments latest nonsense with banning strikes unless a "minimum safe level" of staff is maintained is an utter joke as hospitals are often working at or below normal safe levels, and when the staff do strike they're being very careful to maintain emergency care and have already demonstrated that they will go from the picket line to A&E if needed (it's probably safer in some instances when they are on strike, there are a load of additional doctors and nurses just outside the hospital who will go in if needed).
 
Efour said:
Correct me if im wrong but people dont go into being a doctor or a nurse to earn megabucks, isn't it more for a rewarding human experience, say, rather than pushing numbers around on a screen for 7h a day?

There's more to life than zeros on a bank statement, although it certainly is a part of it.

Striking Doctors? Given my perhaps naive opinion on the reason why people enter the career in the first place, i would think its a major conflict of morals/interests for a Dr. to go on strike, people will die, simples. (Turkish meerkat voice.) That power shouldn't be used as a bargaining chip.

Ive had some truly awful contact with doctors and tbh lost some respect for them as the mythical figures i held them to be say 20 years ago. Glorified search engines, and some terrible decisions which ive had reversed by a more experienced 2nd opinion.

Yeah Doctors... "Junior" doctors probably shouldnt be worked to the bone... but overtime exists. I dont think ive ever met a poor doctor....
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The whole "they're in it for the good of humanity" aspect is why the job has seen such significant real terms pay cuts. By and large doctors enjoy helping people and have soaked up a decade of pay freezes, pension cuts, worsening working conditions. We still have mortgages to pay and are affected by cost of living like everyone else. Helping people doesn't pay the bills.

By undervaluing a profession compared to other countries we lose more staff overseas, more and more trainees working part time so rota gaps are becoming a disaster and overtime shifts rarely filled because of the rates being capped. All this ends up worse care.
 
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Werewolf said:
The governments latest nonsense with banning strikes unless a "minimum safe level" of staff is maintained is an utter joke as hospitals are often working at or below normal safe levels, and when the staff do strike they're being very careful to maintain emergency care and have already demonstrated that they will go from the picket line to A&E if needed (it's probably safer in some instances when they are on strike, there are a load of additional doctors and nurses just outside the hospital who will go in if needed).
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This may really bite them in the arse. I would be pushing to get this defined because I doubt we're meeting it at the moment even without strikes.
 
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mrgubby said:
Wages & how much a job is "worth" to society is a very strange concept. Junior Doctor @ £30k vs Train driver @ 60k , which gives the most "value" ???
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Junior Dr's are still in clinical training so I wouldn't compare those two jobs. Compare a teachers salary instead, perhaps.
 
Freakbro said:
Tbf, in London that could be a 2 up 2 down mid terrace :p
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:cry: Not far off, it's one of those posh 3 story mid terrace houses hahah I told her to move out of London but she no wanty. Tbf it's not her only London property either... poor Dr's.
 
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I support any of the NHS care workers (doctors, nurses, ambulance etc) getting more pay. They do an invaluable job.

But train drivers you can **** off and get another job. They should be automated by now. We really don't need drivers, especially those on so much money.
 
NVP said:
Junior Dr's are still in clinical training so I wouldn't compare those two jobs. Compare a teachers salary instead, perhaps.
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This is a dubious way of thinking about JDs and the term is pretty disingenuous. I was still a "Junior doctor" after 6 years uni and 10 years of working as a doctor. I would run a neonatal intensive care or paediatric cardiac critical care with minimal supervision for several of those later years (a "Senior decision making junior doctor" :cry:).

I'm still learning and training as a consultant.
 
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