Good Morning Britain interview with a BMA representative regarding the plight of the junior doctors. The successive years of failure by the government to address the collapse of the health and social care system is to blame. Hoping to raise awareness and garner support.
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The interviewers were cleary on a mission to get the “yeah well what about everyone who earns less than a doctor?” narrative across, and yet he handled them eloquently and calmly avoiding their traps. Well done, and I long for the day you medical professionals are paid fairly.
I think GMB were very fair here. Some tough questions but open to hearing Vivek’s answers. They asked well what about other people and it’s true that nurses are paid less, but if we let the government pit public sector employees against each other with who’s the worst paid then we’re playing their game. Everyone deserves fair pay and we support the nurses and paramedics to strike for fair pay too.
The fact is that medicine is a highly skilled profession requiring consistent levels of professionalism day in day out, with difficult decisions to be made every hour of every day (or night), with significant ongoing costs (between gmc fees, legal insurance, portfolio fees, and exam fees I’m paying £2500 this year). After 5 years of medical school and £80,000 of debt we deserve more than £14 an hour.
Ideally they would just staff the wards safely and then it wouldn’t be so insulting what they pay us, but to award 2% a year (with the explicit agreement that if circumstances change it would be renegotiated), then to performatively clap on your doorstep every week saying how wonderful we are as we managed the worst health crisis in 100 years, and then not even match inflation with our pay for another year – it makes us all feel like we are not valued or respected. No wonder why people are leaving the profession.
For anyone wondering, Neurosurgery is one of the specialities where they get completely taken for a ride by the NHS due to a lack of consultant jobs after completing their training:
[https://beta.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9162-22-1773](https://beta.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9162-22-1773)
~30-50k. This is the pittance we pay for someone who has got through one of the most competitive specialities in this country and one of the highest paid specialities elsewhere abroad:
[https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/neurosurgeon-salary](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/neurosurgeon-salary)
The public don’t realise how ridiculously cheap they’ve had NHS doctor labour for. None of us expected US/Australia/Canada pay, but over the last decade or so the pay has been eroded to the point of taking the piss. This has been compounded by the multiyear pay deal which has been **lower than other NHS workers**, which the Government lies and completely ignores the original agreement that it was **a minimum and would be reviewed** and instead **forces our “independent” pay body to just stick to the minimum figure.**
Someone who does a 2 year Physicians Associate/Assistant course after doing **any remotely** (and we are stretching the definitions here) scientific degree will potentially be outearning a fucking neurosurgeon with years/decades of experience for a FTE job.