NHS Junior Doctors Industrial Action

[RHB]

The doctors should just come to the US after Trump repeals Obamacare. Socialized medicine clearly doesn't work for the patients or the medicos. I met a charming lady doctor in a Washington hospital who had come to the US from Nigeria via South London, and she agreed with me that the NHS and the NICE death panels were a festering heap of ****.

I'm not sure what the words Socialised medicine mean, but if you are referring to the NHS. then you are talking bollox. Nice set of recollections though, worthy of one of your posts.

 

[RHB]

Seconds away, Ding Ding - Round 2.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35296521

Looks like Acas talks could happen on Thursday/Friday but there is no mention of anything further being offered from the Government. I find the last part of the BBC extract below most telling:

Officials from Acas said they would hold discussions with both sides on Thursday and Friday, although government sources said they were still prepared to impose the contract if the deadlock could not be broken.

You just know that the NHS is safe in this Government's hands.

 

[Pubey]

The doctors should just come to the US after Trump repeals Obamacare. Socialized medicine clearly doesn't work for the patients or the medicos. I met a charming lady doctor in a Washington hospital who had come to the US from Nigeria via South London, and she agreed with me that the NHS and the NICE death panels were a festering heap of ****.

Have you been hacked by Barna?

 

[rigsby]

Seconds away, Ding Ding - Round 2.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35296521

Looks like Acas talks could happen on Thursday/Friday but there is no mention of anything further being offered from the Government. I find the last part of the BBC extract below most telling:

Officials from Acas said they would hold discussions with both sides on Thursday and Friday, although government sources said they were still prepared to impose the contract if the deadlock could not be broken.

You just know that the NHS is safe in this Government's hands.

This sort of attitude towards ACAS has been around for about 15yrs. Even under Blair he was desperate to look tough on unions to grab some centre votes.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Have you been hacked by Barna?

I asked for that, and fair enough. I thought I was trying to illustrate my point by reference to someone who had left the UK system and thrived in the US system, but all I was doing was riffing on the glories of my incredible life outside England, with a soupcon of how I'm willing to talk to the coloureds thrown in for good measure.

 

[Massimo Giovanni]

In most disputes the two sides lay down their agenda, wants and such like. In this dispute neither has made their positions clear or given any sets of figures that neutral auditors or press etc can understand.
The NHS working practices are, like schools, social care, policing and fire brigading, ALL, set for changes as society as evolved. Weekends are no longer non-regular working days (or set aside for church).
Doctors must be intelligent chaps and chapesses, the Government MUST (cough, cough) have some sense SO why can't they have an open discussion and set out what it is they want?
Until this happens, from either side, then I think the sick and weak are being made to suffer for their (both sides) aggressive posturing.

 

[Another Surrey Shrimper]

The BMA are Defo looking for trouble IMO.

Should they strike is another question,must admit I don't know their contract details but it all appears very militant to me.

I do find it a bit alarming that people that would believe the 11% headline and not invested any time in reading about what this actually means. Or say 'they know what they were letting themselves in for' while their contracts are re-written without their agreement.


Do people really think that the profession would withdraw their labour for the first time ever if there was not genuine alarm at the way their profession is being changed without consent.


Who do you chose to believe - Jeremy Hunt, who has stated that the changes will be imposed with or without agreement. Or the professionals what have trained for a decade and could at some point in the past or the future have responsibility for whether you live or die.


If people are disillusioned enough with their job that they will change profession or take their skills to another country - please don't make those people Doctors. If Jeremy Hunt is ****ing this up we may have a very high price to pay.

 

[Pubey]

In most disputes the two sides lay down their agenda, wants and such like. In this dispute neither has made their positions clear or given any sets of figures that neutral auditors or press etc can understand.
The NHS working practices are, like schools, social care, policing and fire brigading, ALL, set for changes as society as evolved. Weekends are no longer non-regular working days (or set aside for church).
Doctors must be intelligent chaps and chapesses, the Government MUST (cough, cough) have some sense SO why can't they have an open discussion and set out what it is they want?
Until this happens, from either side, then I think the sick and weak are being made to suffer for their (both sides) aggressive posturing.

The BMA has repeatedly tried to sit down and negotiate. The BMA pulled out last year when the government denied the working hour safeguards (is there anyone here who would like to be treated by a doctor who had already worked 72 hours in a single week?)

The BMA has offered multiple options this week to sit down and negotiate and cancel the strikes.

Also, lets not forget this impact this could have outside of the NHS. This style of ransom could be held over any other public sector worker. Suddenly you're working 7 - 10pm with no overtime. Saturdays with no overtime. This is after your pay has been frozen for years and your pension gutted.

 

[Tinks]

Being a Person who works very closely with some of these people I fully understand why they feel they need to make this stand and a statement from the government and what people are being informed via the media and from the government is not all what it seems.
Ask yourself why the government are willing to give these people a rise of 11% when other professionals can only mange wage increases inline with inflation and then people might begin to understand why it is such a sweetener.
There will be no weekend rate, night rate or bank holiday rate and in reality when you read the actual proposals some of these proposals actually increase their hours they are currently doing however, in saying that I would sooner be treated by a tired a doctor than no doctor.
At the moment they have their Rota's etc and they can forward plan. This will all go.
I have great admiration for a lot of my colleagues (although not all!) and they are very dedicated people who feel they have no option but to now make a stand.
I fully support them
There are still massive cuts to come within the NHS which in turn will effect us all. I am still very passionate about our health care and don't care what anyone says we still have the one of the best in the world which is free at the point of contact

 

[Massimo Giovanni]

I have read your replies Pubey and Tinks; and in answer to the central issue you raise = NO person, doctor or otherwise should be working 70 + hours: it wouldn't be allowed for lorry/bus drivers would it?
And also I can not see why Saturdays, nights etc should be paid as overtime/bonus when there ought to be regular shift style working which all emergency services do without bonuses.
Have the BMA asked for maximum working hours/shift rotas etc OR is there some truth in the Dr's not wanting to lose the hours and the overtime payments as they would be less than 11%?
I don't believe armed forces, police or fire get extra for shifts/weekends and have had zero pay rise for a few years - not that i am using that as an acceptable reason to debunk the Dr case but in response to Pubey's comment on risks to other public sectors.

 

[EastStandBlue]

Sadly Jeremy Hunt is a complete idiot and can't seem to understand that simple concept, even when 50,000 doctors, and numerous academics try to spell it out for him.

I dare say he knows full well the concept, but he's having to justify edicts passed down unto from on high and balance Osborne's promise of a 24 hour NHS without the requisite funding.

A similar thing's occurring in the energy sector. There's quantifiable evidence that cheaper renewable deployment (onshore wind and utility-scale solar) is driving down the wholesale price of energy, delivering cheaper bills to consumers, and yet DECC has stripped support frameworks to the bare bones to limit this deployment in order to protect households from the cost of the subsidies which are placed onto bills by utilities. The Merit Order Effect demonstrates that this is a false economy, yet Amber Rudd (and Cameron this week before the Liaison Committee) has been left to justify cuts to renewables as a means of protecting bill payers.

Rudd, Andrea Leadsom and other officials at DECC have taken an absolute shellacking from the energy sector for the best part of six months now, but there really is only so much she can achieve and say with Osborne running the show.

 

[Pubey]

Yeah that's probably a fair point about Hunt and a good parallel to draw.

The whole thing is very frustrating when you put your life into evidence based health research and policy and you see the government using it as a box to tick, rather than taking that work and critically assessing it and using it to base policy on.

The government commissioned me and some colleagues to evaluate the pilot of NHS 111. We found it to not deliver what it was expected to deliver. Sadly once our report was published (1 month after the data came in) the government had already committed to rolling out NHS 111, 6 months earlier!

Pretty much why I'm leaving academica and whoring myself in the private sector. Less rewarding, but better for my work-life balance and sanity.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

The government commissioned me and some colleagues to evaluate the pilot of NHS 111. We found it to not deliver what it was expected to deliver. Sadly once our report was published (1 month after the data came in) the government had already committed to rolling out NHS 111, 6 months earlier!

Pretty much why I'm leaving academica and whoring myself in the private sector. Less rewarding, but better for my work-life balance and sanity.

 

[Pubey]

haha, walked into that one:smile:

 

[Pubey]

Just learned that the staffing today while on strike (emergency only) is the same as when there's a royal wedding.

 

[jassyfa1]

Lets also remember that these doctors have to revise for exams on top of their 72 hr working week. When I worked for the NHS doctors would be on call from 8pm to 8am (no break) then do a ward round (walk round with the consultant regarding all the new admissions plus all the patients under that consultant) before finishing, again unpaid before finishing their shift. Then they are back at 8pm the next night and so on for 6 days.
Lets also remember that liability is a big issue in the NHS 1 mistake and its bye bye (been there done that), and that doesn't just mean the over worked junior doctors but the nurses who have to pick up shifts as agency staff can cost 3 times as much and not be as skilled as a regular nurse.
Basically the NHS is falling apart and its only the dedicated underpaid staff (those that are working on the wards) that keep it going. Want an example of underpaid? My Mrs is a ward sister at a hospital, she is responsible for the day to day running of the ward, she get called in when staff are sick to cover, has to change days off if there is a meeting, has to organise the budget of the ward both in human resouce and equipment. And there is me, a taxi driver, all I do is drive people from A to B and explain to the passenger what is wrong with the world today. Guess who earns the most?

 

[Uncle Leo]

We're all in this together

 

[rigsby]

Lets also remember that these doctors have to revise for exams on top of their 72 hr working week. When I worked for the NHS doctors would be on call from 8pm to 8am (no break) then do a ward round (walk round with the consultant regarding all the new admissions plus all the patients under that consultant) before finishing, again unpaid before finishing their shift. Then they are back at 8pm the next night and so on for 6 days.
Lets also remember that liability is a big issue in the NHS 1 mistake and its bye bye (been there done that), and that doesn't just mean the over worked junior doctors but the nurses who have to pick up shifts as agency staff can cost 3 times as much and not be as skilled as a regular nurse.
Basically the NHS is falling apart and its only the dedicated underpaid staff (those that are working on the wards) that keep it going. Want an example of underpaid? My Mrs is a ward sister at a hospital, she is responsible for the day to day running of the ward, she get called in when staff are sick to cover, has to change days off if there is a meeting, has to organise the budget of the ward both in human resouce and equipment. And there is me, a taxi driver, all I do is drive people from A to B and explain to the passenger what is wrong with the world today. Guess who earns the most?

I bet its the passenger

 

[Napster]

Guess who earns the most?

is it Uber?

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Let's face it, the Tories have engineered this conflict from the off and will implement this new contract deal in the summer whatever happens.

Should do wonders for Junior Doctors' morale in the NHS.:nope: