Junior Doctors Strikes

fez said:
Haven't most peoples wages taken a real terms pay cut over the past 20 years? Unfortunately we have a bit of a mess of a country and giving everyone in the public sector a stoking payrise isn't feasible. People underestimate just how many people are working for the public sector. The extra tax burden and increase in costs to so many things would be a mess.

Its basically a 5th of the entire workforce that are public sector. You also can't do a straight comparison with private sector as the public sector usually has different perks. Teachers for example only work 3 months of the year ;)

When it comes to the NHS, the biggest issue isn't necessarily pay, its understaffing, that would take years to fix though.
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Yes. As I pointed out the only industry that hasn't undergone a real terms pay cut is finance.
 
fez said:
Increasing pay is unlikely to ever put someone off a job but you have to consider the knock-on effect of these things. If one band gets a 10% increase it will make the next bad need the same and so on. Its a complicated thing to fix without absolutely killing the budget. If a job is super stressful its often because you are overloaded with work and increasing the number of staff helps a lot with that.

Depends on how skilled work is as well and what someone with that skillset could get elsewhere. All needs to be balanced.
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Oh of course, I'm not suggesting it's as easy as divvying out percentages amongst the bandings, just that higher pay will undoubtedly help to nail people down and bring more people in. Money, in this case, would go a long way.
 
Werewolf said:
it's only gotten worse as more and more ambulances have got tied up outside hospitals due to staff shortages over the last few years.
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It's not just that. There is literally no room at the inn, much less the manger.
At a hospital I worked at, they were at minus 90 beds for medical patients over the Christmas period.
Yes, minus 90, the equivalent of 3-4 full wards.
 
Werewolf said:
unfortunately it's the same in some businesses as well, my brother in law works in a factory where they'll quite happily pay for untrained "temp" staff at a higher hourly cost than the trained staff, every day, and will frequently pay overtime to get the trained staff to work extra shifts, but they won't increase the base pay a bit to encourage more permanent staff to stay when they know they can go and get a job in a safer, more comfortable, easier and more sociable job and at best lose a few percent of their wage (brother in law looked and worked out he'd probably be better off, one of the main reasons he's staying is they're talking about possible redundancies and he's got ~25 years there).
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Yeah I guess it comes out of a different budget so they can spin it as "we're reducing staff costs" but only because the temp staff costs are not considered
 
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?
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That's the thing, being a doctor, nurse, career, teacher, etc are all "Feel good jobs" Full of people who prioritise jobs which makes them feel good over jobs which pays well. The Government knows this and thats why we have this problem with low pay and strikes. Until we have no one lining up to do these jobs anymore then nothing will change.

We need a mass and permanent walkout to make any impact. Of course, this will never happen.
 
Might seem an odd thing, but word of mouth is killing employment in so many places too. My GF is a Midwife and my Mom was high management for years and they've both said they'd actively encourage relatives and friends from training up these days. They've both had quite serious health problems likely brought on by the work they've had to do. It's the same story everywhere. A few MWs I know have also said they'd never encourage there children to follow in their footsteps for fear of what harm the jobs might do in the long term.

If I'm being honest, I'm the same. I used to blindly defend the NHS, but now... It's a bureaucratic nightmare of a place that values nothing.
 
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tamzzy said:
Yeah. I have calculated if I drop my hours from 54h a week as a trainee, and go full time locum and do 2 long shifts a week (25h - ie more than halve my clinical hours)
I would earn more money (2.5k/mth extra) and have a heck ton more free time out of medicine. And can do more shifts for more £££ if I really wanted to.
And still pay into the pension.
Win-win really. Being a consultant is not all that's cracked up to be.
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Even more stupid is it's pretty sensible to drop to LTFT and do locums with the time off. Usually going 80% won't extend training, you keep all the employment benefits and can earn a decent amount more.

My wife is pushing me to do a year or two overseas. 300K for a year in Dubai is pretty tempting.
 
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tamzzy said:
Most of my ICU bosses hated it because money rules lol.
It was good money
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Yeah with neonates the guys that have been out found in some ways it was clearer cut. We spend ages hand wringing over ethical dilemmas and balancing best interests vs parental wishes. In the middle east all the babies just get flogged to the bitter end and that's that.
 
Minstadave said:
Yeah with neonates the guys that have been out found in some ways it was clearer cut. We spend ages hand wringing over ethical dilemmas and balancing best interests vs parental wishes. In the middle east all the babies just get flogged to the bitter end and that's that.
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Haha yeah. I've done a few months of PIC. Coming from adult ICU, a lot of the adult medics feel very very uncomfortable with the amount of flogging that is done...even in the UK lol
 
tamzzy said:
Haha yeah. I've done a few months of PIC. Coming from adult ICU, a lot of the adult medics feel very very uncomfortable with the amount of flogging that is done...even in the UK lol
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Some of the adults critical care guys can't wait to bump off our patients! It's a rough transition for the families.
 
tamzzy said:
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
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Same as lorry drivers when the government tricked people into believing the money they were on. Yes you can get 60-70K a year but that's sleeping in your cab 4 nights a week and maxing your hours daily (2x15 and 3 x 13). Reality for 40 hours work is closer to 40k a year.

People are also way more savvy now especially with social media and internet. Why spend years training up when you can just sit in an office doing finance 9-5 Monday to Friday. If you are academic enough to become a doctor you are academic enough to have a way easier life earning good wedge.

This is going to be a major problem in a generation time as these are key jobs for a normal functioning country and the people who do these should be rewarded.
 
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tamzzy said:
No. A band 5 nurse at the bottom of the band (ie fresh nurse out of uni) starts at £27k for a 37.5h week
So per- hour, nurse v doctor (both fresh from uni) the nurse actually earns more.
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Take home pay of my partner who is a ITU nurse on 37.5h a week 2 years out of uni is £2300 per month in london.
Take home for a FY2 is about £2600 for a 48h week.
 
Also the cost to pay all junior doctors £10k pa more is £465 million per year after tax recovery.

Nothing compared to the billions wasted in PPE and track and trace.

Don’t forget we were the ones on the shop floor saving the lives of the nation through covid at huge personal expense.
 
Minstadave said:
Real terms pay for doctors has been falling for a decade even before inflation went crazy:

www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk

Chart of the week: Pay has fallen in real terms for most NHS staff groups since 2010

Strike action is affecting a number of sectors across the UK this month, including within the NHS. With widespread discontent over pay and conditions, Lucina Rolewicz, Mark Dayan and Billy Palmer have expanded on our previous staff pay analysis to include other NHS staff groups.
www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk

I don't think there'd be any fuss if pay kept in line with inflation. It would need a roughly 15-20% payrise to achieve pay restoration (which is the same as the nurses asked for) to achieve this.
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The problem is a 15-20% payrise to doctors wouldn't suddenly magically make the NHS run better. It might lift the morale of doctors briefly, but with the same hours and demands being placed on the NHS we'd be back to square 1 in a few months.

Ideally Doctors hours need to be cut and more of them recruited. That way they're not overworked/exhausted, and with the hours they'd be expected to work you'd assume higher productivity levels.
 
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