As resident doctors prepare for another walkout, doctors, NHS staff, and their families have hit back at criticism, taking to the Independent’s comments with passionate, first-hand accounts of life on the front line.
Our wider community is sharply split over the upcoming industrial action and their demand for a 29 per cent pay rise. With one reader insisting that doctors “should be ashamed”.
Amid the division, however, several medics defended the strike as a last resort after years of burnout, pay erosion and understaffing.
Many noted that doctors face job insecurity, rising costs of training, and little respect from the public.
While one parent recalled their son working 90+ hour weeks over the festive period, another said that the “greedy doctors” narrative was not just wrong but “heartbreaking”, and accused the government of breaking the NHS on purpose.
But not everyone backed the British Medical Association’s decision to strike. One medic called the 29 per cent pay demand “excessive” and warned the walkout could further harm patient care.
Here’s what they had to say:
90-hour weeks
The gods were very kind to me, and I had three kids. All of them of similar intellect. My eldest son decided to carve a career in commerce, as did my daughter. My younger son, from the age of about fourteen, set his sights on the medical profession. 20+ years later, my younger son is now a consultant working in the NHS. My older son’s basic salary is circa 2.5 times that of my younger son. But he also gets quite substantial bonuses, a share issue at the end of each financial year and mainly works from home roughly 8–9 hours per day, 5 days per week.
One might conclude from that anyone wanting to enter the medical profession as either a nurse or doctor must be utterly bonkers… But thank heaven they do!
When my younger son was an ST1 (Speciality Trainee year 1) we were all sitting round the dinner table on Christmas Day, and it emerged that he had managed to get Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day off. Upon enquiring how he had managed this, his reply was to the effect: “I will take the pain when I go back.” It subsequently emerged that his first two weeks back were both 90 hours, and the third week was 93 hours. His observation about the 93 hours: “I wouldn’t want to see me after 93 hours.”
Templer
Do you support the doctor’s strike? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Looking back, I had it easy
Our daughter went through the FY1/2 (foundation training), SHO (Senior House Officer), Reg, S/Reg, now an NHS Consultant and working for the first time in the one place…
She had the same horrific working conditions as I did when training, but she had the EWTD (The European Working Time Directive ) to contend with – where they still worked crazy hours but the management couldn’t admit to being short-staffed, so getting any ‘overtime’ became extremely difficult…
Looking back, I had it easy…
ScoobytheDog
No one outside the NHS will understand
I do not think that anyone outside the NHS will truly understand what it is like to be a resident doctor or appreciate the demands of the job. Five or six years of medical school, over £100k in debt, exam fees through your 20s and 30s, and training bottlenecks, not to mention the emotional labour and the responsibility of keeping people alive.
In clinical years of medical school, we spend most of our days on the wards, essentially working unpaid. Medical school is exhausting, but it is worth the effort to become a doctor. In our final year, we are randomly allocated to work in any hospital in the United Kingdom to undertake two years of foundation training. This process does not consider one’s family commitments, relationships or grades in medical school.
Whilst scheduled working hours are capped, there are weeks where one may be on the rota to work up to 72 hours. Of course, often people stay overtime due to staff shortages and workload. There are often too many patients and not enough doctors or nurses to cover the wards. Lunch breaks are often 10–15 minutes, or do not happen at all depending on the clinical picture.
The emotional toll of seeing so much suffering, disease and death, and the weight of being the one to break bad news to patients and their loved ones, is heavy. Especially when consultations are rushed due to the volume of patients and staff shortages. Many times, your doctors are going through similar things in their personal lives – a parent with cancer, a brother that died the night before – but we put our own pain and humanity aside, we show up and we care for those that need us. The nature of the job makes burnout likely, and coupled with erosion of salaries and a decline in public respect for the hard work that doctors put in – is it a wonder people are leaving the NHS to pursue work as a doctor elsewhere?
In other countries the job may be equally as emotionally demanding in a given moment, but the staffing in the hospitals will be better, the public will show you more respect, and you may work the same (or fewer!) hours for better pay, enjoying a better work-life balance – which is inevitably better for one’s own mental health and wellbeing. Not to mention, speciality training is shorter and less competitive abroad.
The strikes and the pay rise are needed to boost morale and retain our home-grown talent. Unfortunately, many fail to realise that the more doctors that leave the NHS, the worse the staff shortages and waiting times get, and the harder it becomes for NHS staff to keep the NHS running, contributing further to staff burnout and staff leaving.
BlueAlpaca
The fact people look at this as pure greed is heartbreaking
I’ve seen family and friends who work as doctors, nurses, cleaners etc. struggling on a daily basis. Often working as a single doctor on a ward with countless patients and working unimaginable hours, which takes a massive toll on them – for how dangerous it is for them, on top of being treated horribly by patients and upper management alike.
A comment I always see made is “doctors are not as nice as they used to be”, which I understand, but what is overlooked is that almost all NHS staff are overworked, on long shifts and have been treated horribly. The previous government made the NHS unmanageable (in my eyes on purpose), and staff are still working their hardest to fix it.
The fact people look at this as pure greed is truly heartbreaking and it takes away from what these heroes are doing and putting up with on a daily basis. The government should be ashamed at trying to vilify the backbone of society for simply asking for better working standards.
ConMakepeace
Well-deserved remuneration
A lot of commentators obviously have no idea of current working conditions within the NHS. Doctors have multiple degrees and train for seven years before they start their practical training. “Junior doctor” is a deeply resented title by the way, as is “trainee doctor”.
They then have further training to specialise – again, up to five years.
They have ruinous professional subscriptions to the Royal College, MDU, BMA, etc.
Many professional courses are paid for out of their own pockets. On-call is expected whatever your family circumstances – Christmas, Easter, school holidays. Doctors have had a 30 per cent wage cut. All they are seeking is a return to their well-deserved and earned remuneration.
When a doctor reaches consultant level their wages cross the upper tax levels, which means they earn less than when they were training! Many of the doctors now training in the UK are planning on emigrating to other countries who pay their worth. The choice is yours – support your doctors or lose them and end up relying on poorly trained, unqualified physician associates. Believe me, you will really start whining then.
Yarbles
I emigrated for money
Doctors have always been exploited by the NHS and continue to be so. When I was an NHS consultant, pay was poor and then I lost two elevenths of that meagre salary to be graciously “allowed” to see private patients – but unbelievably was required to “give essentially the whole of my time to the NHS”!
It took me only a short time to realise I was being treated as a “mere employee to do as I was told”, so I emigrated to the USA where I instantly earned (literally) TWENTY times as much as the NHS paid. I returned to Britain when I didn’t need to work again.
It is a waste of effort to complain about NHS exploitation of its staff – just use your skills elsewhere. Bon chance!
The Claymore
As a medic, I do not support this strike
As a medic myself I am not in support of this strike or the requested pay rise, and I am ashamed of my own union (BMA).
I do not like the way the NHS is going. It was always seen as a vocation, meaning that when you sign up for med school you know what you are taking on. But today it has so many problems caused by successive governments, and now this excessive pay request threatens its sustainability.
Flossie
Doctors have no job security
Few people realise that doctors have no job security. Following their two-year post-qualification training there are insufficient speciality training places available, and so they either have to scramble around to find one of the few short-term 12-month fellowship contracts or they are out of work.
Added to that, they have to suffer the ignominy of having their assistants (Physician Associates) paid £10,000 per annum more than them. If that happened in teaching there would be outrage. All resident doctors are trying to do is fight for reasonable pay compared to PAs and job security. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
TuscanS
Pay should keep up with inflation
Everyone deserves for their pay to have kept up with inflation since 2008. Everyone includes doctors and other NHS staff.
Doctor
Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.
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