Resident doctors in England vote to strike over pay

The country cant afford a payrise

Just wipe their student loans if they work for the NHS for 10+ years

Resident doctors pay is down more than 1/5th in real terms whereas the country as a whole is at break even compared to 2008

If people really love the NHS like they claim they should write to their MP to get this mess sorted

Best and the brightest students don’t want to do medicine any more, we will see the consequences when it’s too late

After 22% last year? Come on. Nobody else in the public sector is getting anywhere close to these kind of pay rises.

They see the government as weak (which is true) and are trying to force their hand again. Meanwhile ordinary people are the ones who suffer because of the impact of these strikes on the NHS.

They will never be satisifed whatever the government throws at them. They could give them another 22% and will be the same story next year.

I’m all for doctors getting paid more but they need to read the room…

Now is not the time after two consecutive huge pay increases.

Doctors have seen the largest pay erosion out of all professions in recent years, if we want to retain talent then we need to accept that significant moves towards pay improvement are made

Doctors are not the problem.. They are the backbone of the NHS and they are being systematically undervalued despite years of gruelling training, high personal sacrifice and enormous professional responsibility..

Real-terms pay has been falling for over a decade and many doctors now face burnout, understaffed shifts and an exodus of colleagues to better-paid jobs abroad..

This is not about greed it is about justice, sustainability and the future of the NHS itself.. The same government that says we cannot afford fair pay always seems to find the money for wars, corporate subsidies and tax breaks for the wealthy..

If we truly value public health, we need to treat those who deliver it with dignity and fairness.. Otherwise, we risk losing the very people we rely on in our greatest moments of need..

I think you should all go and search out the threads on here from Doctors about their pay. It’s very enlightening. You may well change your opinion.

Support all strikes!
You’ll never know when it’s your sector needing it and in a country with huge pay stagnation…

Imagine not supporting the very people who keep you alive. Resident doctors strike over pay and rightly so. Overworked, underpaid & treated like disposable parts. If we don’t back them now we’ll have no one left willing to pick up the stethoscope.

The government’s already importing foreign doctors to patch the cracks cause it’s cheaper than paying our own properly. UK med grads are leaving in droves for Australia and Canada and if this keeps up we’ll be outsourcing our entire healthcare system while pretending the NHS is still world class. Pathetic.

You wouldn’t need imported labour if you looked after your own first, understand that.

I am a newly qualified resident doctor due to start working in the NHS at the end of the month.

The prospect of being so significantly undervalued, overworked, underpaid, replaced by less qualified staff, and the risk of unemployment beyond my 2nd year of training, all has me currently debating whether to start my medical career or find a better alternative.

This is after a childhood and adulthood of studying and working, plus £150k of debt, all to achieve my dream of being a doctor. A childhood dream has become an adulthood nightmare.

I’m now contemplating switching careers to things like accounting or software engineering, where I would be valued and treated much better.

This country is absolutely broke.

Watch how the middle earners get squeezed again, to support pensioners/lower-earners.

Why would you stay here if you could leave to a country that doesn’t kill aspiration?

1,000,000+ immigrants coming in a year – majority a net drain to public services – it was always going to go this way.

Controversial, but I’m just not that sympathetic.

After accounting for inflation, Doctors are on average paid more than double what they were in the 1950s. The massive pay bump right before 2008 is a massive outlier, it is only against that massive outlier that the current pay seems to have reduced so substantially.

See: *BMJ* 2017;358:j4385

Relative to the continent, Doctors in the UK are the 6th best paid in Europe. [Doctors’ wages: Which countries in Europe pay medics the highest and lowest salaries? | Euronews](https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/11/doctors-salaries-which-countries-pay-the-most-and-least-in-europe)

You’ll notice that all 5 countries above the UK have a higher GDP per capita. This leaves the UK marginally below Germany ~6%, substantially above comparable populations as France and Italy, and about a fifth up over the high-tax, centralised wealthy states Norway and Sweden.

If one wishes to argue that the entire healthcare professional job market in Europe is broken, then that is a different conversation. But relative to the pay trend over the lifetime of the NHS, and relative to our comparable standard of living neighbours, UK doctors are paid a perfectly reasonable amount.