Junior doctors on the Island and across the country have today (Tuesday) begun a 4-day walkout as their pay dispute continues.
Up and down the country, members of the British Medical Association (BMA) are making their voices heard outside hospitals including here at St Mary’s Hospital in Newport.
The BMA – which seeks a 35% pay rise for all its members – said that they haven’t received any offer from Health Secretary Steve Barclay.
This latest round of strike action follows the strikes undertaken in March.
NHS bosses are expecting the 4-day walkout to cause major disruption with some expecting it to be the most disruptive in NHS history.
During the 3-day walkout last month, around 175,000 treatments and appointments were cancelled – including a plethora here on the Island.
Get back to work you greedy, irresponsible medics. Grossly overpaid profession and the greed of medics is a major contributor to the NHS failings. In Spain, there are three times the number of doctors per capita as in the UK and medical doctors get paid a third of the amount paid in the UK. The UK medical profession restricts the amount of medical doctors trained to keep wages high and happy to import poorly trained medics from other countries to partially make up the shortfall. Just make far more places available to train in medicine and drive wages down but with plenty of trained medics available. NHS should employ at least twice as many medics for the same wage bill. Bank nursing should be banned as well. Costs NHS billions.
A simple google of your little factoid suggests Spain are actually struggling to recruit because of low pay? Any further insight on this one doggy?
To my knowledge, everybody that is suitable and puts themselves forwards for medical training as a doctor gets accepted. Is there a hidden store of medical students who are being denied the opportunity to train as a Doctor?
My daughter is a junior doctor. She graduated from Southampton in ’21 and is coming to the end of her F2 year. She will be specialising in paediatric medicine.
Basic entry requirements are 3x A grades at A level and pass the UCAT (University Clinical Aptitude Test) entry exam. You also have to submit a personal statement demonstrating your commitment to a career in medicine.
Even then the drop-out rate is around 10%.
There may be a “pool” of people who would like to train as doctors. There certainly isn’t a pool of people who are capable of training as doctors.
My daughter was a straight-A student all through her school years, but med school almost broke her. Tough doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Straight A student at which failing island high school? Secondary education on the island is a joke.
Plenty of people get 3x A grades ar A level. Plenty fail to get places studying medicine because there so few places despite the obvious need for more.
Doctor Dad, having academic qualifications is very easy for those born with minds capable of such, as is being marvellous at sport if you are blessed with a very lean, fit body.
And whilst discipline and effort are required to hone such skills, it is not too hard for those people.
Yet as PROVEN, the ‘personal commitment’ statement is clearly a FAILIURE as they are striking.
With such ‘paper thin’ commitment to patients shown at such an early stage, I suggest she and others are not what the NHS needs, and likely most young doc’s will ‘go private’ after getting US to pay for their training.
Could always be a vet and rip off old people as animals cant talk back or think too deeply.
So I was booted out at 15, left school with nothing, bit of a class clown but every day was bullied. Everyone now over 10 years later are like hey where were you educated your very intelligent; So because your daughter had straight A’s got on well at school and is now a doc hey good for you doc I bet you were a doctor too right? There is an even bigger pool of people capable of being a doctor but most dont have the opportunity to as they haven’t been raised as a princess like your daughter… trust me if med school broke her then I would breeze through because I’ve been through much much worse.
Continued;
Even as an F1, fresh out of medical school, she was left as the sole cover on wards with no backup whatsoever. If med school was tough, F1 year is a baptism of fire.
Yes, she is striking. She is striking not because of pay, but because of the atrocious working conditions of too many patients and way too few doctors, and it’s getting worse.
She doesn’t want a pay rise because she wants more money herself. She wants a pay rise in the hope it will stop the mass exodus of doctors from the profession.
Because she doesn’t want to be the one left having to choose which patient lives and which dies because she can’t treat both on her own.
How selfless of her…
There is no mass exodus of doctors from the profession. Where would they go and get the same amount of lovely money?
Plenty of doctors dumping their workload on junior doctors is part of the problem in the broken NHS. Junior doctors are traditionally worked to death for two years on lower pay (about £30-34k) like it is a badge of honour on the understanding that they will soon be earning plenty of moolah. Specialists and consultants then milk the NHS kitty dry.
The Telegraph, Jan 2023: “NHS England must train more doctors and nurses in Britain and reduce its reliance on foreign staff, its chief executive has said. More medical school places are needed to stop British candidates being turned away because courses are full, Amanda Pritchard said. She added that she wanted to stop spending £3 billion a year on agency staff. Ms Pritchard admitted that patients were dying because of record waiting times in emergency care. NHS England has more than 133,000 unfilled vacancies. The 7,500 medical school places on offer in the UK each year are heavily oversubscribed. We are seeing universities having to turn away excellent people, not just for medical degrees but nursing, therapy — across the board.”
Seems we all dented our saucepan lids for nothing.
Now the chrome is peeling off and handle cracked.
Never again.
You reckon the average junior doctor give a flying f*rt what someone like you thinks?
Hardly going to turn one away when you are sick and/or in pain, are you?
Oh, and try to get your fact right. Bank nurses are NHS nurses and get NHS rates. It’s agency nurses that cost the money.
Oh dear ‘Dogma’ – you clearly don’t understand what is happening or what NHS staff have to go through!
If they’re irresponsible and grossly overpaid, perhaps you’d like one of the staff from our many supermarkets to treat any condition you may have or develop in the near future?!
Doctors spend 6 years in medical school and then at least another 10 to 15 years training whilst on the job before they reach consultant, drawing in a measley wage whilst they’re at it.
Whilst people’s appointments shouldn’t be cancelled or care compromised because of a strike – this happens regardless of strikes – just unfortunately on a larger scale. Perhaps the government ought to stop being greedy!
Measly wage???? £30k for two years and then plenty of dosh after that. £50-80k as a specialist and then £90k plus as a consultant. Average GP in UK is on £98k.
But we’re not talking about GP’s, we’re talking about those who are working in the thick of it. You do realise one junior doctor is responsible for the whole hospital at night, right? Over 200 poorly patients for £40k? Absolute joke. Go work in the hospital and see whether you think making life or death decisions is worth the money their paid. You’re blind to the real problem, just a judgmental prick by the sounds of it.
Oh and also, it’s agency nursing that costs the NHS billions – not bank nursing; but whose fault is that? If the government paid nurses what they deserved, they wouldn’t feel the need to jump ship to an agency who IS paying them what they deserve.
Are you telling me that if the same job you’re doing now was advertised by another company for 3x the wage your currently on, you wouldn’t take the opportunity?
Say what you like, but judging by your hideous comment you have no idea what it’s like to work within the NHS.
Average nurse in UK is on £37,000. Sounds like plenty to me. What do you think they should be on???
Hope you don’t get sick I would ban people like you. I was in A &E 2 weeks ago, they were run off there feet. I take you are a Tory. Hope you going to say when the lazy teachers are on strike, let’s see, they get the most holidays , teacher training or extra day off.
People like you make me sick
Another example of the “greed culture” of these days used by Labour to destablise our country. In a time of financial crisis as we are now we should all be responsible and act accordingly for the common interest rather than being selfish. But then this is the culture of modern world: all for me and who cares about the others!
Because if you don’t look out for yourself, who the hell does? Our government are sitting on a wage of £80k plus expenses, whilst the rest of us are struggling to make ends meet. Not everyone will agree with strikes, understandably. But perhaps you should aim your frustration towards the government. They’re the bad guys here, not the hardworking staff that deal with more than you probably do on a day to day basis.
Because when you are wheeled into A&E and the overworked doctors are forced to decide who to save, because there aren’t enough of them to save everyone, you are going to be OK with it not being you, right?
This isn’t about pay. This is about there being too few doctors for too many patients. There is no legal way to strike over the state of the NHS and the way it is run, so they strike over pay.
Doctors on strike? We never get to see them when they are not striking so, not much difference.
I think a lot of them are busy dealing with immigrants in Dover.
You know that you can’t get to see them because they are leaving the profession and/or the country because of the pay and conditions in the NHS, right?
In any case, you are clearly bleating about GPs. GPs are not “junior doctors” and are not striking.At least try to sound like you have an idea what you are talking about before posting.
Just a thought.
Shame on you. Get back to work, god help us if there is a full scale war, what will these doctors do, strike because there is no money to pay them, you should be ashamed!! Doctors and medics in Ukraine are working still and they are almost being bombed out of existence. Maybe think about that before your greed gets the better of you, oh hang on, it’s to late for that.
I agree to them having a pay rise, but 35% is totally ludicrous!
They don’t expect 35%. That is the starting point.
What they want right now is for Barclay to sit around a table with them to discuss the situation with no preconditions. Barclay is refusing to do that. He won’t talk to them unless they already agree to his conditions.
And the strikes will continue until Barclay sees sense or the NHS goes bust.
The strike could be called off right now. All it would take would be Steve Barclay to say “lets talk”, but he won’t. He is the one man with the power to stop the strikes, but he won’t do it.
“What they want right now is for Barclay to sit around a table with them to discuss the situation with no preconditions.”
Then they need to throw out their precondition of asking for 35%….
Yes they do a great job but as a junior doctor in essence you are in a apprenticeship and we all know apprenticeships pay low until you fully qualify (that’s if your any good)
Try to understand what you are talking about before posting such utter garbage.
An apprenticeship lasts two years at most, and is usually a year.
By the time a doctor qualifies as a consultant, they will have been practicing for up to 10 years (and 5 years at medical school before that, racking up £70k of debt).
They need to go and become GPs. Cushiest job ever.
This is what the government wants, for the public to turn against healthcare staff, making it look like we’re the unreasonable ones – when in fact it’s the government. They’re sitting on £80k a year with all expenses paid, whilst the rest of us struggle to get by.
They have the power to sit down and negotiate, but they won’t. So, rather than aim your frustrations at the ones who work so damn hard in ever changing circumstances, try taking them up with the government who do not give a flying fuck about us. They want us to go to private agencies to work, because that’s just another excuse to tell us that the NHS isn’t fit for purpose in the current climate.
If this incompetent Tory Government who have run this country
into the ground over the last 13 years looked after NHS workers
previously.
These strikes would not have happened.
Look at all the MP pay rises over the last 13 years.
Shocking.
Thought we were all in in together
What a load of b@llocks
We are doing our best. It’s the fault of those greedy doctor’s! Nothing to do with our policy of long term underfunding to encourage the unwashed masses to pay for private healthcare (which may be why you see more ads on TV for the same).
Keep voting Tory and there won’t be any NHS for anyone.
Glad to hear it and glad to see the back of it. Put the beast out of its misery.
100% ageeed pay rises, not like the greedy teachers u dont save life’s