This sort of thing drives me crazy, you see it with nurse and resident strikes in the US too. People in the medical profession aren't required to suffer for the sake of their patients, and it's...
The Department of Health and Social Care said it was disappointed with the vote.
A spokesman said: "Strikes are hugely disruptive for patients and put pressure on other NHS staff.
"We urge the BMA to carefully consider the likely impact of any action on patients."
This sort of thing drives me crazy, you see it with nurse and resident strikes in the US too. People in the medical profession aren't required to suffer for the sake of their patients, and it's scummy to present this as the staff don't care. In the US, patient safety has been a cause of many of the recent strikes, because staffing levels are so poor that staff can't do their jobs safely. But even if it's just about money, medical staff have bills to pay too...
We're short of at least 10,000 doctors in England, and that was an estimate created a few years ago based mostly on the number of medical vacancies - it doesn't take into account the fact that...
We're short of at least 10,000 doctors in England, and that was an estimate created a few years ago based mostly on the number of medical vacancies - it doesn't take into account the fact that England has fewer doctors per capita than very many other countries. (We're also short of tens of thousands of registered nurses).
One of the problems driving consultants out of healthcare, that's not mentioned by the article, is the baffling pension arrangements that were causing some people to have a negative income. There are also some really terrible management practices in different NHS Trusts.
In the past I would talk to junior doctors and ask them if they knew what specialism they wanted to go in and there's an interesting split in the response I get. If I'm there as a patient they'll say "nephrology" or "haematology" or whatever, but if I'm there as a bureaucrat in a meeting they'll say "I dunno, I'm mostly seeing what they need in Australia or New Zealand and what the exam requirements are". And it's not just one or two people - it's a lot.
So, we have a double whammy: consultants are leaving because they have terrible pay and conditions (and we shouldn't overlook conditions), and we have junior doctors aren't becoming consultants in England because they're leaving because of pay and conditions. Retention of doctors is terrible, and we can't just recruit more doctors because they need to be trained. One partial solution is to use IMGs (international medical graduates) but England is pretty racist, and the current Secretary of State for the Department for Health and Social Care has said he wants to see fewer foreign workers in the English NHS.
The tl;dr is that the NHS has gone from being pretty good in 2010 to being pretty terrible in 2022, and that's almost entirely driven by successive Conservative governments who are simultaneously incompetent and ideologically driven to dismantle the NHS.
The even shorter version is: everything is on fire, and the government thinks fire hoses are woke nonsense.
This sort of thing drives me crazy, you see it with nurse and resident strikes in the US too. People in the medical profession aren't required to suffer for the sake of their patients, and it's scummy to present this as the staff don't care. In the US, patient safety has been a cause of many of the recent strikes, because staffing levels are so poor that staff can't do their jobs safely. But even if it's just about money, medical staff have bills to pay too...
We're short of at least 10,000 doctors in England, and that was an estimate created a few years ago based mostly on the number of medical vacancies - it doesn't take into account the fact that England has fewer doctors per capita than very many other countries. (We're also short of tens of thousands of registered nurses).
One of the problems driving consultants out of healthcare, that's not mentioned by the article, is the baffling pension arrangements that were causing some people to have a negative income. There are also some really terrible management practices in different NHS Trusts.
In the past I would talk to junior doctors and ask them if they knew what specialism they wanted to go in and there's an interesting split in the response I get. If I'm there as a patient they'll say "nephrology" or "haematology" or whatever, but if I'm there as a bureaucrat in a meeting they'll say "I dunno, I'm mostly seeing what they need in Australia or New Zealand and what the exam requirements are". And it's not just one or two people - it's a lot.
So, we have a double whammy: consultants are leaving because they have terrible pay and conditions (and we shouldn't overlook conditions), and we have junior doctors aren't becoming consultants in England because they're leaving because of pay and conditions. Retention of doctors is terrible, and we can't just recruit more doctors because they need to be trained. One partial solution is to use IMGs (international medical graduates) but England is pretty racist, and the current Secretary of State for the Department for Health and Social Care has said he wants to see fewer foreign workers in the English NHS.
The tl;dr is that the NHS has gone from being pretty good in 2010 to being pretty terrible in 2022, and that's almost entirely driven by successive Conservative governments who are simultaneously incompetent and ideologically driven to dismantle the NHS.
The even shorter version is: everything is on fire, and the government thinks fire hoses are woke nonsense.
On a similar note, Nurses are instead calling off strike action after unions were split on taking the pay offer.