Junior Doctors strike

MaizieD just trying to offer pointers to young parents earning the same salary as a barista! How on earth can childcare be remotely affordable?

Bottom line is that I think it’s wrong for doctors to demand a 35 per cent pay rise.

The rationale behind this is that junior doctors have lost 26% of pay in real terms over the past decade. Then there is 10% inflation to deal with, so they are actually asking for a less than inflation rise for this year.

As foxie48 says, this is a starting point for negotiations, I don't for one moment think that they will get this. But, as in all bargaining, you start high (or low, depending on where you're coming from) and expect to meet round about the middle.

As for the childcare/au pair diversion, I always get rather irritated by people who think they can tell others how they should run their lives.

Well Ronib I agree with you, I think a negotiating point which starts at 35% is to high and I don't think for one minute that they believe they will get that much. I'm also not happy with a four day strike but the BMA has become very militant of late. Perhaps that's because so many doctors are very unhappy with their pay and conditions. We tend to reap what we sow. However, surely this has nothing to do with the costs of childcare other than I was responding to Lizbethann55 comment regarding the strike falling during the Easter holidays. I could also have said that many junior doctors won't have an Easter holiday because they will be working. In the last 6 years my daughter has been able to have Christmas day off three times, once she had come off nights on Christmas morning and once she was starting work on Boxing day morning. Holidays are just normal working days (and nights).

foxie48 two au pairs cheaper than two small children in a nursery. Living away from the south east, larger more affordable housing is available. At least medics are in great demand all over the UK so have choices.

Bottom line is that I think it’s wrong for doctors to demand a 35 per cent pay rise.

Yes, foxie48, it's a no-brainer we need consultants to keep working for the reasons you set out. I noticed today that the Chairman of NHS England said doctors were over-skilled and perhaps we need more 'assistants'. I can't accept doctors are 'over-skilled' - otherwise some operations would become impossible to perform.

No-one has suggested that it's a "problem confined to medics" but childcare is a problem for anyone doing shift work that does not have a regular pattern, particularly if it includes nights, it's very difficult to sleep during the day with young children in the house. Not many people have the extra bedrooms required to house 2 au pairs or the money to pay a nanny but wonderful for those who do!

I was surprised to hear about the child care arrangements one professional couple put in place for their first and only child. It involved paying for two young au pairs to jobshare. It worked for this family.

The more affluent employ a full time nanny. And some childminders do a very good caring job.

I have much enjoyed trying to help out with my two youngest grandchildren today but have realised my limitations! In any event, yes childcare is expensive and problematic but this is not a problem confined to medics.

Lizbethann55

School Easter holidays? The striking doctors won't have to worry about child care.

Well that will make a change, organising childcare around long days (07.00a.m to 07.00p.m), nights, weekends and bank holidays is very difficult and incredibly expensive as it doesn't fit around the usual provision.

And your point is?

School Easter holidays? The striking doctors won't have to worry about child care.

Four more days of strikes have been announced. They are book-ended by Easter and another weekend so in practice that’ll be ten days with either skeleton or no staffing.

Good point foxie48. I dont know about Cardiology, but I do know locally that in Mental Health some new consultant Psychiatrists are only on temp 9 month contracts.

Yes, consultant, not junior docs.

And its all about the funding, because we would love to keep some of the keen young consultants who are after all now looking for permanent berths. All so counter productive, all so chaotic, especially in MH where getting to know complex conditions take time with patients, you can't just do tests and hand on to someone else.

Grantanow I also watch that series and find it pretty amazing. I have mixed feelings about the change in pensions but we do need consultants to stay working as we are facing a huge shortage of consultants, particularly in certain specialisms. Anaesthetics, children, psychiatry, and heart and lung treatment have the most shortages currently with Cardiology being top of that list. There is a link between the number of doctors in training and number of consultants. Basically we can't increase the number of doctors in training if there is a drop in the number of consultants and it's not possible to increase the number of consultants because new consultants must have successfully completed every level of their lengthy training. It's a "chicken and egg" situation. Junior doctors learn increasingly complex procedures from watching more senior doctors, if the consultants aren't there, who do they learn from?

I have just been watching the BBC series on operations in the Leeds NHS. The complexity of the tasks, the depth of training needed, the intellectual ability required, the effort needed to ensure post-operative beds are available, the stamina needed to carry out operations lasting 10 hours or more and the compassion shown by surgeons leaves me full of admiration. Moaning about striking doctors seems trivial in comparison with the work they do.

MaizieD

Have a look at this chart, grantanow then tell me how raising public sector wages could possibly start a wages/prices spiral seeing as they lag behind private sector wages and public sector wages don't affect prices.

We heard a great deal about 'differentials' in the 1970s. Do you think that the private sector is suddenly going to demand that it maintains its differential with the public sector?

That is precisely the point I made in the second part of my comments!

Casdon

Fleurpepper

I can well imagine that those who use private health insurance won't mind junior doctors leaving the NHS in droves to go to the private sector, due to very stressful conditions and low pay. Many will go abroad too, for the same reasons.

They will mind if they need emergency care, intensive care or very specialist care for long term conditions, which are not available privately.

I think sometimes people are driven to using private healthcare through desperation.
It is in fact far worse than we are being told.

If someone can afford to pay for an operation to improve their quality of life instead of waiting for up to 4 or 5 years for an operation, can you wonder why they do that?

It is not going to change the way the NHS works if they don't carry out private work because the Consultants' contracts specify the hours they have to work for the NHS and what they do in the rest of the time is their concern. Some of the private work they do is contracted by the NHS.

Indeed, Casdon

Private sector groups skim off the most profitable sectors

A and E, M Health, long term care for very chronic and complex conditions (especially for the very elderly with multiple problems like combinations of dementia and physical symptoms needing complex nursing long term care).....are not profitable.

If you have a very careful look at limitations on all but the most expensive private care you'll find clauses of limitation.

Fleurpepper

I can well imagine that those who use private health insurance won't mind junior doctors leaving the NHS in droves to go to the private sector, due to very stressful conditions and low pay. Many will go abroad too, for the same reasons.

They will mind if they need emergency care, intensive care or very specialist care for long term conditions, which are not available privately.

Ziplok, absolutely agree about athlete's pay. It's totally obscene in America. People will pay for season tickets when they won't pay to go to the dentist.

I have never begrudged good wages to doctors for so many reasons. There seems to be a tendency in the US (on the left) to criticize doctors who choose a well-paying field and pursue it and who can command a good salary.

I don't want someone who is poorly paid, badly overworked, with no possible future improvement replacing my knees or removing my appendix.

If doctors are bad, toss them out. If they are good, pay them well.

Have a look at this chart, grantanow then tell me how raising public sector wages could possibly start a wages/prices spiral seeing as they lag behind private sector wages and public sector wages don't affect prices.

We heard a great deal about 'differentials' in the 1970s. Do you think that the private sector is suddenly going to demand that it maintains its differential with the public sector?

A good point, MaisieD - public sector employees cannot pass increased wage costs onto the consumer. But there is an argument that large increase to public sector wages might fuel a wages/price spiral which the feed into the inflation measure. In practice though public sector wages have fallen so far behind inflation (and large increases are unlikely) that that mechanism fails to come into play.

Thanks GG13, I hadn't realised that.

If Sunak and Hunt believe wage increases in the public sector drive up inflation why did the Tories not introduce wage restraint in the private sector?

If they believe it.

It's an absurd thing to try to convince the public of because public sector wages don't have any influence on inflation. They are not in a 'charged for' sector' so how could their increased wages affect inflation, which is based on purchase prices?

OTOH, Improved public sector wages would help to drive growth when they are spent into the domestic economy. Cutting or stagnating public spending depresses growth; as we know from the affect of the 13 years of tory austerity that
we have already endured.

Raising public sector wages would also improve the tax take, if that's what they're bothered about.

foxie48

"However, if you are from overseas and pay massive sums for the course you can get in more easily. Something's crook in Ballarook. Those overseas new doctors leave, of course, to go to their countries of origin so the training country gets little benefit."
*nanna8" I don't know where or when you got this information but it is completely wrong. There was an article in the Sunday Times (2019) which alleged this but has been completely discredited by the Medical Schools Council. Funding for home and overseas is completely separate and overseas students are subjected to a cap of 7.5%, which has been in place for a number of years. British students also travel abroad for medical training in countries like Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria etc. I think you only have to look round the average UK hospital to see how much we depend on doctors and nurses who are not British and who have trained in their own country which is a rather different picture to the one you have painted.

I think nanna8 is in Australia and referring to the Australian system.

Starmer has put well-being near the top of the agenda.

short quote from longer article:

“Not only do we believe there is such a thing as society, but we believe it is the glue that binds us together. As human beings we are given purpose by the work we do, nurtured by the family and relationships we care about the most, rooted in the places we live and the communities we belong to. We need a government that recognises and respects this, and we need a strong, just and equal society to sustain it.

keirstarmer.com/plans/a-just-society/