Save the NHS!

inferno said:
I have sympathy for the doctors with regard to salary, but as a pilot, I get zero bank holidays and weekends are non existent and I work random night and day shifts, of course this is obvious with the job of being a pilot, but in this modern world people need a 24/7 service and if you are able to negotiate extra pay for anti social hours or working on weekends great for you, but you shouldn't take it as a given or a right. If I got paid extra for working nights and weekends and it got removed would I be angry, definitely, maybe I'd take industrial action, would it be successful, who knows....
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It'd be bloody impossible to figure out if you were working a night or not, you change timezones through the flight :)

Aren't your working hours very strictly regulated?
 
Moses said:
I'd guess they're talking about post-training contract, when people are solicitors, but I don't know how complete their data is/if they're focussing on London where it is big money (as opposed to regional firms where's it's good but not the figures people imagine). Basically I don't know if it's a true average or not. Obviously I can't imagine many, if any, law firms get away with paying min wage, but I think people have an idea of everyone walking out of uni and getting £50k a year as a big swinging **** lawyers, when it's not really like that.

When I say it might be when solicitors, to flesh that out... you do your degree + LPC + two years on the job training - which is the training contract period all solicitors have to do... barristers do a one year pupilage - and are then a solicitor (and obviously by then are earning more than at the start of that TC). Or degree + GDL + LPC + two year TC, for the ~50% of people who go down that route. So the equivalent with medics would be after there first two years, when they go into specialised training (I think that's right... I should know for sure because my brother's girlfriend is a doc, but obviously I'm a bad person!)
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your questions are already answered in the more detailed graphs i posted just below Buddy's
 
All this talk about pay : it's not the only concern, in fact, for many junior doctors it's of secondary importance. Sure, it's an additional slap in the face, but as some have pointed out the main problem is that if the workforce is spread more thinly over a seven day week this will just result in poorer care (higher mortality & morbidity rates ). The only way a proper 24/7 NHS can exist is to recruit/train more staff and provide the additional funding to support this. Changing the junior doctors contract will achieve nothing in this regard.

For those that think all doctors are financially motivated : if that was the case then it would be in their interest to see the NHS privatised. Believe me, pay in the private medical sector is far better than what can be earned in the NHS. And that holds true for all allied health professionals, not just doctors.

Be careful what you wish for ... ( to those lay people that seem to have fallen for Hunt's misinformation & rhetoric ).
 
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Please let's not forget that even if this were all about pay, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Until you can pay bills with some sort of system where you earn tokens for good deeds then people have jobs to make money to spend on stuff that they need.

It's totally possible for people affected by these changes to care about patient care as well as themselves, and it would be a bit rich of a Conservative government to accuse people of caring about money a bit much.
 
A) It's not £23k starting salary once enhanced rates are taken into account.
B) LOL @ junior doctors who threaten to move abroad and work in private/insurance based healthcare systems which they hate so much, not about money eh?
 
stewski said:
Just out of interest what is the pay like?
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I work in the middle east so i'm on an expat contract, so about £8000 a month. A new pilot in the UK could be making 2000 or 3000 a month. One of my best friends is a studying to be a doctor from Imperial and he is nearly finished. He does a crazy crazy amount of work and studying and the starting salaries quoted are quite honestly a joke, if I had done all that work to be paid like he does I'd be furious, so my only advice to him is get the necessary experience and get out of the UK and head for the cash, because he worked hard for it!

I saw an exert from 2012 saying a junior doctor in UAE makes 5k gbp a month, plus either free housing or an allowance of atleast 30k gbp a year I would guess from my experience.

If we think doctors pay needs to be bumped, which I think is fair, are we willing to pay more taxes for it?

All above being said, I do get the impression that whilst the starting salary is very low, in their 40s and 50s doctors can get big salaries through doing private work? Is this correct?
 
Private work is only common in a few specialities (radiology/anaesthetics/surgery).

This strike isn't about a pay increase, we're fighting to not take a pay cut.
 
Dolph said:
The government was elected by the electorate with a manifesto pledge for a true 7 day NHS...
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They're not trying to get a 7 day NHS with this new contract though, they're after an NHS wide paycut.

They turned down the BMAs offer that allowed the increased weekend staffing in a neutral pay envelope because it didn't recognise Saturdays as plain time. That is what they're really after.
 
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Minstadave said:
They're not trying to get a 7 day NHS with this new contract though, they're after an NHS wide paycut.

They turned down the BMAs offer that allowed the increased weekend staffing in a neutral pay envelope because it didn't recognise Saturdays as plain time. That is what they're really after.
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They are trying to change the times when labour is expensive, reducing the incentive to have lower staffing and service levels during the evenings and weekends, and especially on Saturdays.

It isn't purely about cost neutrality, although there is dispute about whether the bma proposal was.
 
tamzzy said:
no, it's about having the right to a personal life, you know, like doctors are, believe it or not, humans too
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Then surely they should be advocating an insurance based system like the ones they wish to work for overseas? If the conditions are so great in Aus/NZ/US then why wouldn't doctors advocate the same financial model be applied in the UK?
 
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