Would you support the doctors' strike.

Not at his age, gj (babysitting the child) and they don't do home visits at 6pm.
No, it was just Friday
( I was particularly miffed as I had been waiting for him to sign a repeat prescription which he had omitted to do earlier. )

Firstly operating theatres are used in the evening for routine operations already. However this takes a huge amount of ancillary staff as well as the doctors (junior and consultant level). My DIL who is a consultant works part time and does one very late evening and one very early clinic so that she is available at times to suit her patients. One of the real shortages and difficulties is the availability of anaesthetists for any operations.

or an emergency home visit...

Probably had one... or a child to babysit for.

Just a point about GPs "twiddling their numbs", anybody who has tried to get an appointment within 72 hours at any time whatsoever would surprised to hear that. There are clinics, home visits (yes, they still exist) as well during the day, but people who are still in work, commuting or need a partner at home to babysit are more than happy with early or evening appointments. I was waiting for a repeat prescription recently at 5.45 and saw our own GP (the senior partner) plus another legging it out of the health centre as if he had a train to catch!

Exactly Trisher- doctors do work at week-ends and nights- but for emergencies and care of those in hospital. What the Government wants is not this, they want 24/7 working- eg routine operations to take place 7 days a week, routine everything going on 7 days a week.

It's always been the case, and is the case all over the developed world- that routine care, clinics, operations- take place Monday to Friday- and that at night and week-ends it is emergency care and taking care of those already in hospital- not routine operations (eg a 7 day list for operating theatres and clinics- which has never ever been the case). One junior doctor on Question Time explained eloquently that this would take doctors AWAY from the week-day rostas, and create more problems and risks, NOT less.

A separate issues for GPs- but at the moment GPs are expected to provide very early morning and evening consultations- and sit there twiddling their thumbs as nobody wants those times anyway. Possibly a good time to write insurance reports, etc- but then they might as well be at home, with their families.

By the way, the debate went on for three hours. The motion they were debating was

That this House takes note of the ability of the National Health Service to meet present and future demands.

What a ridiculous title. I do not think the Tory government needs to worry about the House of Lords rocking the boat.

Yesterday, there was a debate about the NHS in the House of Lords.
This is one of the contributions. Cut and paste, obviously, but never mind. It contributes quite well to this discussion.

"I speak as a parent of a junior doctor who qualified at the University of Nottingham and now is a resident doctor at NYU medical centre in New York. It might be interesting if I were to compare and contrast aspects of the two systems as seen through his eyes.

The first aspect is the teaching. At NYU each resident receives around 14 hours of high-powered classroom teaching each week. The regime is free food, phones off, high concentration. Lectures are given by specialist consultants. As he puts it, “Every day I lunch with giants”. At Nottingham he was lucky to get two hours per week.

As for attitude, at NYU he feels a valued member of the team; in the east Midlands he and all his colleagues felt underappreciated. Most NHS medical staff were disgruntled and demotivated. Of his colleagues in Nottingham, a third either left the profession or went to work abroad. Each one had cost the NHS £300,000 to train but, when they left to go elsewhere, no one noticed, no one took responsibility, there was no exit interview and no one cared.

Then there is the pay. In his final year in Nottingham, he earned about £40,000. It is true that his basic pay was £23,000 but, with unsocial hours banding, the pay soon mounted. At NYU he earns $60,000—exactly the same amount—but in the United States almost all junior doctors carry student loans in the region of a quarter of a million dollars, and repayment starts immediately.

Finally, there are the hours. Last month in New York, he worked 80 hours per week, as he has done every month. He works six days every week, including many weeks on night shift. Even on daytime shifts, he leaves home at 5 am and often gets home at 8 pm.

The American junior doctors are the ones with really unsocial working hours. They are the ones who struggle to make ends meet and the ones who should be complaining, but there are no picket lines to be seen on First Avenue and 32nd Street. The question is why? Let me hazard a guess. In much of the UK, junior doctors—indeed, even senior doctors—are treated as objects: cogs in the wheel or items on the spreadsheet to be moved here and there at will. There seems to be little realisation that to get the best out of people you have to encourage them, you have to integrate them as part of the team and, most of all, you have to make them feel valued. It is called leadership. Looking at this junior doctor crisis, there seems to be little of that in evidence in our NHS but it is what we really need."

I've got fed up with saying junior doctors do work weekends. What do people think happens? You go to any hospital and you are assessed by a junior doctor at any time of any day or night. If you are in hospital it will be a junior doctor who is called if there is an emergency and you need care. And JH banging on about the figures for weekends is just smoke and mirrors.

This dispute is about the contract for hospital doctors not GPs. Hospital doctors do work weekends. maybe not so many consultants, but the non-consultants i.e. all the others, do. Anyone who has been in hospital at a weekend will have noticed there were doctors available. Sometimes things are delayed. e.g. tests. because other departments may not cover weekends as comprehensively as doctors. If these departments were to work weekends, it would probably cost the NHS a lot more.
J Hunt keeps saying that more people die at weekends because the NHS does not give 24/7 cover but the truth is we just don't know the reasons why death rates are not spread evenly across the week. And even if we did, the detailed reasons for this have not been researched. See my links from the British Medical Journal and the Lancet, above.
So it's a bit like saying that there are more car accidents on a bank holiday so the police contracts should be changed because the police don't work on bank holidays. The police would of course respond that they do work on bank holidays and that, in any case, a shortage of police on duty might not be the cause of the increased accidents.

Would someone please explain to me just why the junior doctors think it's totally unreasonable to expect them to work at weekends? My father was a GP and he managed to do so and also had a very happy family life. Mind you, this was in the days when you didn't go into medicine for the money - possibly I have answered my own question.....

Thanks- but truly, all GNeters should read it.

Just like 'loss leaders' in supermarkets- so is private treatment in private hospitals under the NHS at low prices... Helps break the system- knowing full well they will get it all back and tons more in the long run. It's all very carefully planned, and accounted for.

Granjura, for you.

koshh.org/the-connection-between-the-junior-doctors-contract-and-the-american-corporate-takeover-of-the-nhs

It's always been the case that friends who had their own business or worked in the private sector, earned considerably more than I ever did, or did any of my friends who were teachers, social workers etc.
I realise that many people who work privately don't earn huge amounts of money, but neither do public servants. I think the average pension is around £6000 for former public servants.

Looking out our adult children and their large friendship group, it remains the case that the public servants earn less and work equally, if not longer hours, than their former school friends who work in the private sector or have set up their own businesses.

" To cover the shortages, the NHS is now spending as much on locums in a fortnight as it would cost to run a whole A&E unit for a year, he disclosed – a situation he described as “madness”.

Widespread shortages are leaving patients facing ever longer waits in casualty, he told a conference in London, with far too many left to endure “pretty awful care”.

In total, more than 600 consultants and trainee A&E doctors have gone abroad in five years he said, with the vast majority seeking a new life in Australia.

Had they stayed, they could have treated 25 million patients over the course of their careers, he said."

From Doctor Mann, the most senior emergency doctor, last September.

Does she have any indication of where they are going- if they leave?

Abroad? The private sector (that is waiting for them with very open arms and big fat cheques- Cameron's 'friends') or ?

My DDIl is a receptionist for NHS 24 and tells me the Drs are leaving in droves. The service has actually been cancelled occasionally as there's no Drs available.

More support for them.

www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/elly-robson/high-fives-cakes-and-flying-bicycle-pickets-public-support-rides-high-for-doctors

www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/sam-semoff/heart-of-matter-patient-addresses-junior-doctors

A heart patient in Liverpool Hospital in support of the strike. He's still in there.

The reason the system is in such disarray, gillybob, is because you are getting your way.
"If they want out, they are free to leave"?
They are, in teaching, healthcare, social work.
There are vacancies in all those areas and more. They do not necessarily want to go into the private sector. They are going abroad, where their skills are better appreciated.

That is very harsh and most of the groups you castigate as simply 'hard done by' don't want more money - or they would be presenting employers with a huge demand for unpaid overtime.

You just don't get it do you?

I'd say we've got the education and health system we deserve. And it's falling apart.

Lack of funding (studies suggest most people would support an increase in tax if it went to the NHS), too much demand on those trying to hold it together and directives from government by people with no qualifications in either education, medicine or social work.

While inmates continue to run the asylum what else can we expect?

Whilst I totally appreciate that in every walk of life there are those that "give more" than they need to. But for all those that go that "extra mile" there will always be some that give as little as they can get away with.

As I said in my last post. There is no money tree, no never ending supply of money to be handed to those in the public sector who happen to feel that they are worth more.

How would you propose to pay the increased salaries that the teachers, doctors and social workers "who prop up the system" feel they deserve?

If the "hard done by" teachers, nurses, social workers etc. want out, then they are free to leave. Although I would suspect that they would be hard pushed to match their salaries, perks, holidays and pension pots anywhere in the private sector.

So true Anya

Gillybob I really don't think you understand the strain these systems are under and the fact that if teachers, doctors, social workers are propping up the system through good will, unpaid and excessive overtime.

Should they withdraw their goodwill, and I for one would not blame them, and work to the hours they are supposed to and to the written terms and conditions of their contract, the whole system would collapse , believe me.

'Hard done by'? That doesn't even begin to describe it.

Hmm, Gillybob, I don't think it's only public sector workers who complain about being hard done by. In the case of junior doctors though, who are among the best educated (and most expensively trained) workers in the country, and who are tasked with the most important decision-making in the NHS, surely we should all want to see them adequately recompensed?