La maggioranza delle persone del Regno Unito ora si oppongono al NHS Doctor Strike, suggerisce il sondaggio

And this is why the UK government can hold out, if the NHS is badly affected they can point to the strikes which the public currently don’t support and they will get the blame, while the public will only be in more support of not increasing pay.

The issue is that last year during the strikes it was made a massive thing, where ultimately the government gave them a significant pay rise that the public supported, but a year later your back for more again?

Yea that ain’t going to sit right in the eyes of the average person, we need to ensure the NHS is competent and to do that it needs to be a competent workplace, but your average person isn’t going to look that deep, on a surface level we consistently hear how bad the NHS has gotten and then doctors expect a pay rise after pay rise? You can’t expect the public to support them especially when the service is declining.

I’m not necessarily against the strike but why did they accept the deal last year if they don’t like the conditions?

Gotta love the article not mentioning that only 10-20% of those under 50 said “strongly oppose”

Whereas 43% of the 50-64 and 52% of the 65+ bracket were strongly opposed.

Surprise surprise. Those who need the services of doctors and are most removed from how much the young are paid are the ones opposing strikes

See, this is why nothing changes : the public BEGS their masters to lick their boots and opposes people who actually try to do something, then later moan they are poor and exploited. Typical British.

Serious question, does it really matter what the public think?

The doctors deserve more, but so does practically everyone in the NHS. It would probably go a lot way to improve the PR if the doctors were also using their weight off influence to appeal for fairer NHS pay and progression overall, not just for themselves.

I don’t really give a fuck what the majority of people think about my wages. Why should doctors care? Should we all have our pay and conditions set by the public opinion!? When we get a vote on how much hedge fund managers and estate agents and water company ceos are paid, then we can have a vote about doctors.

Well yeah? It’s the optics. Huge pay deal last year and striking with in the same year. Not the best. Most people want to see a doctor and the waiting list won’t be helped by this. The average person also has the view rightly or wrongly that ‘they get paid so much more than I do’ and I don’t strike. So I’m not surprised people don’t support another year of strikes.

The UK is now trapped in debt and locked in a constant race against inflation, where real living standards are steadily falling. If we don’t pay people wages that keep pace with inflation, how can we expect them to stay in demanding roles especially in professions like medicine that take over a decade to train for?

You can’t just rotate junior doctors in and out like fast-food workers to cut costs. But that’s where things seem to be heading: undervalue the job in the public sector, then quietly shift services to private healthcare. Over time, this conveniently solves the problem of an ageing population and those drawing from the system without paying into it.

It feels like society is being restructured. The emerging message is: contribute in a way deemed economically useful, or don’t expect support. It’s a cold, transactional model that abandons the principle of collective responsibility.

Not sure public opinion is of consequence here. It’s very simply only the government’s and the BMA’s opinion that matters.

Have to ring before 8:30 AM to find out if they are on strike.

My concern with this is the choice of the cost of living rate that skews the perception of their current salaries. They’ve seen substantial increases most of the people funding them haven’t. It’s a hard job, no argument. But the cpi vs rpi seems self-serving rather than realistic.

So the people needing the services are opposed to Doctor’s striking for good pay and adequate resources?

Honestly the public are a joke.

I don’t understand lol obviously everyone opposes the strikes? I would imagine the doctors don’t want to strike either. Their hands are being forced by the government.

I don’t want anyone to have to strike. I want them to be happy at work. A strike is a last resort.

Never blame the strikers.

And in the very next breath will wonder why their pay never goes up. Also will chat shit about how wonderful it was that Thatcher broke the miners and garbage strikes. Then complain again about how their wages never go up. Then, they will vote reform and wonder why the NHS is in the shit and the Police never bother catching criminals. We NEVER fucking learn.

They should be told the stats of how many UK trained Dr’s and nurses leave for other countries because of the rubbish conditions to seek better pay and life balance.

Then they’d really get a shock.

As a doctor in the NHS, I am striking because

• I do not deserve working myself to death to cover for short staffing and NHS job cuts

• I am so far behind my non medical colleagues in terms of pay and job satisfaction while drowning in college debt. My friends of my age group are buying houses and settling down while I am trying my best to pay off my rent.

• I do not deserve to be paid less than ACPs, ANPs and definitely not PAs; all who work for the very same broke NHS that Wes Streeting is talking about.

• Lastly because my job should be something I enjoy doing. There are already enough stresses with this line of work, I don’t need to be worrying about pay too.

• Do not think we don’t care about the common public- this rhetoric that the ministers spread to create divide between doctors and the public. We care because we are common public too, doctors are not elite. It’s the MPs and the ministers that don’t care. Happy, satisfied doctors will give the public the care and service they deserve. Unhappy, disgruntled doctors are apathetic.

Doi: NHS consultant n emergency medicine

Have you heard of schrodingers doctor?
Both too important to strike but not important enough to pay properly.

I’m gonna a try and provide a counter to negative arguements for strike action.

Nuance is important. The previous pay award was over a number of years and in real terms when adjusted for inflation accounts for only 1% toward pay restoration. In terms of the current dispute whilst a one a done settlement would be lovely the medical establishment realises it’s going to be a journey and as such are looking for a concrete plan towards pay restoration. I don’t know precisely what would be deemed acceptable if I had to guess I’d suggest somewhere between 3 and 7 years. The present offer would take 20 years plus.

The second argument is what-aboutery. What about nurses, what about the police force. It goes without saying every public sector service deserves more but that is not for doctors to fight for. This is not a race to the bottom. We can support allied disputes but we cannot fight the Fight for them. But I know many will continue to use this arguement so let’s take it to its natural conclusion

What other profession has to commit to it in their teenage years and get top grades? And then 5-5 6 years in uni. The latter years have shorter holidays and are heavy in clinical placement so it’s difficult to support your self financially. What other profession would employ a random number generator to determine where you work when you do finally qualify? It’s not an exaggeration to state you could be shunted across the country away from friends and family and you have no choice but to accept or be unemployed. Then there is speciality applications. Time was competition ratios meant there was a good chance or getting a training post…those days are long gone-medically unemployment is very much a thing now. And if you are lucky enough to get a job once again you could be shunted anywhere. god help you if you have a doctor partner as they may be in the same
Boat and i know people who have had to rent second homes and only see their kids a the weekend

What other profession then adds the burden of mandatory exams that must be passed in order to progress at our own expense. They run into thousands. You can add mandatory courses at similar expense the need for clinical audit, research and other quality improvement to the which all needs to be done in our own time and at our own expense. Our training and need to stay up to date is lifelong in line with the level of skill and responsibilities we have

What other profession can we then add the jeopardy of losing career, our finances or our liberty from what might be well intentioned mistakes.

What other profession can we expect a whole
Host of other nuisances from
Having to struggle to park at work (at our own expense) being Rota’d to work major events like weddings despite leave requests plenty of time in advance or not receiving a rota in good time so we can plan our lives. Some of these things are meant to be enshrined in our contracts but still don’t happen correctly or regularly. What other profession might regularly have to give up Christmas, birthdays , special occasions.

What other profession might might our health be at risk? I and many of my colleagues have been assaulted in a+e many times. whilst everyone else was being paid to remain safe at home I was catching covid from the wife of the first person in my region to get the disease and it’s the sickest ive ever been and it took me a year or 2 to recover. Many of us had colleagues and friends die.

There might be professions out there that hav some of these burdens but no public sector service comes close to having all of them combined. So what aboutery? In terms of skill, dedication, comitment and training required nothing comes close. The things I am trained to do and might need to do at the drop of a hat would blow your Mind and for want of a better term those things are relatively crude. The things say a surgeon or radiologist can do blow my mind so the degree of separation in that regard to the average man on the street is incredible. It’s not comparing apples with oranges it’s comparing apples and moon rock

The next argument will be well this is what we signed up for. Well if we knew all that and still did it it’s cause for praise not criticism.. And even then medicine at the start of someone’s uni course is vastly different you can’t legislate for the change in conditions. Medicine a year ago is vastly different from today and the speed in which things are getting worse is only increasing indeed I reckon the conditions are deteriorating yearly now to significant degrees. And even if a particularly well informed 17 year old researches all these issues by the time they are 3-4 years into their course they really don’t have many options other than to finish it and persist with medicine

The argument of vocation however no longer stands up to scrutiny-the poor treatment medically professionals on a whole receive these days means the well of goodwill that keeps us behind after shifts have finished and has us coming in our days off to do work has long dried up

And onto conditions. The government state the strikes are unsafe (they aren’t-emergency care is better as it’s being delivered by consultants) but there seems to be stony silence about constant level of danger and jeopardy most doctors face day in day. The constant moral injury from treating patients in corridors and on the back of ambulances, rotas barely fit for purpose in terms of appropriate cover, increasing numbers of patients, increasing entitlement, increasing abuse. Burnout, stress, mental health issues…all are part and parcel of being a modern day medic.

And doctors are voting with their feet. Our degrees and training are valuable across the world. Canada, Australia, United Arab Emirates even the US is easier to get into now. All these places value doctors, pay them properly and there is the added
Bonus of nicer climes. In America you can legitimately become a millionaire as a doc.

If conditions are not changing the only way you will have a chance of keeping these professionals is to at least begin to pay us what we are worth.

This is a watershed moment-the NHS is on life support. Once a critical mass of staff leave the NHS is truely
Doomed. Every time we are called lazy, or greedy which let’s be honest here a proportion of the population think is true it chips further at the morale of a clinician and might be the straw that breaks that particular back in terms of emigration. This section of the public will get the health service they deserve. There will either be significant degrees of privatisation and or a 2 tier system where those that can afford it see a doctor and everyone else an allied health profession like a PA. When you are having to pay hundreds for an X-ray, thousands for surgery and hundreds of thousands for ITU stays when it it is effectively free now people will look back on these moments and ask why didn’t we do more in support?! Or worse something is missed because you saw someone with substandard training!

Remember if you think it’s expensive to pay professionals, wait until you have to pay amateurs

Because the media bangs on about it without explaining why they would strike……