DR MAX: this Insatiable Demand For Higher Doctors' Pay Looks Tawdry > 자유게시판

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Junior medical professionals are threatening to strike again. So what, you might say? When are they not threatening a walk-out? In the past 2 years, they have taken commercial action 11 times.

This makes me really angry. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is wasting public regard for physicians, battering realities and pursuing Left-wing crusades without any regard for the expense to the health service.

Their pressing needs for greater pay make my occupation, my lifelong occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing. There are moments when I practically feel I might rip up my subscription card in disappointment.

But it isn't just my union that is behaving so disgracefully. The real perpetrator is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union settlements because coming to power has triggered a greedy free-for-all.

Unless these outrageous needs can be brought under control, I fear the NHS might be bankrupted.

The flashpoint this month is the BMA's need for a pay boost better than the 4 percent that was implemented on April 1 - a rise the union has actually dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 per cent is already above the rate of inflation, which is presently performing at 3.5 per cent. In reality, the offer used to junior doctors (or 'resident physicians', as we're now expected to call them) offers substantially more, as they will receive an additional ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing a typical increase in income of 5.4 per cent.

And it comes on top of a gigantic 22 percent typical increase provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting last year in a desperate quote to put a stop to the constant strikes, after they demanded a 30 percent pay increase.

Their pressing needs for greater pay make my occupation, my long-lasting vocation, look tawdry, cynical and money-grubbing, states Dr Max Pemberton

Junior doctor members of the British Medical Association (BMA) on the picket line outside the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle in 2023

That craven capitulation by Labour didn't work, of course - simply as surrender has actually shown not successful in mollifying the transport unions, the teachers and every other militant collective. The BMA validates its continued push for higher pay by claiming medical professionals are even worse off by about a quarter in real terms considering that 2009.

The chairman of the BMA council, Professor Philip Banfield, sneers at the 4 percent increase, stating it 'takes us in reverse, pressing pay remediation even further into the range,' and includes ominously: 'No one wants a return to scenes of doctors on picket lines, but sadly this looks much more likely.'

What else did anyone expect? Unions are mandated to demand as much cash for their members as they can get. They don't exist to be affordable or to welcome compromise. And when Labour shopped them off, the unions noticed weak point. Prof Banfield understands there are more concessions to be won now, more pips to be squeezed.

But the NHS is not some personal, profit-making corporation, and this is not a battle between an exploited workforce and fat feline investors. Our beleaguered health service is funded by all of us - and it is on its knees.

This is something most doctors can identify. Yet, over the past years or more, the union has actually been more worried with pursuing Left-wing programs than acting in the finest interest of its members.

For example, the BMA's management has refused to endorse the Cass Review, commissioned by the NHS as a report into gender identity services for kids and youths.

The findings by Dr Hilary Cass, published last year, against hurrying under-18s into gender transition treatment, such as the age of puberty blockers, that they may later on regret.

It needs to not be the BMA's function to introduce into a dispute on the analysis of medical evidence. That's what the Royal Colleges are for.

Sir Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. This year's pay increase follows resident doctors were granted rises worth 22 percent by Mr Streeting last year

The union has violated its bounds, and I'm seriously dissatisfied about paying my subscription to an organisation that makes political declarations in my name.

These include require a ceasefire in Gaza, for example, and criticism of China for human rights abuses - as if Hamas is going to return Israeli hostages or Beijing is going to stop persecuting the Uighur minority, just since a medical professional's union in the UK calls for it.

This is low-cost virtue-signalling, provided for no other reason than to make the BMA officers feel excellent about themselves.

I would appreciate them far more if they put their energy into fact-checking their own claims. The BMA is susceptible to bandying about numbers that don't withstand scrutiny.

A few of their figures relating to earnings and inflation have been debunked, utilizing information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members consist of physicians with competence in medical statistics, it's a humiliation to everyone.

Most of all, I detest them for wasting the general public support for physicians that we made at great personal expense throughout the pandemic.

It is sickening that the real respect in which the medical profession was held simply five years ago has been changed to a big degree by cynicism and even by disapproval.

Small wonder, then, that lots of junior medical professionals whine that their good friends with tasks in tech or banking are better off than they are.

Junior doctors demonstrating outside Downing Street in 2015 throughout strike action

Medicine should be beyond contrast, not simply one of a raft of careers determined just by the monetary benefits they bring.

This crisis has been brewing a very long time, considering that before the 2010 union federal government.

Tony Blair's intro of university fees in 1998 has actually led straight to the situation today, where virtually all my junior associates owe money by as much as ₤ 100,000 - and even more.

As a result, an increasing number of younger colleagues appear to see a profession in medicine as primarily transactional.

They argue that not only have they worked for their degree, but they've also bought and paid for it. Which if they can make more money by giving up the NHS for the economic sector, or even by emigrating to practice abroad, for instance in Australia, well, why should not they?

It's a drastically different outlook to that of my generation. As somebody who was fortunate sufficient to have his 6 years of medical training funded by the state, I see my role as a psychiatrist as much more than just a job. It's my calling.

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I am deeply pleased with what I do. Nothing else could replace it or give me the very same degree of satisfaction.

I personally think that a person method to solve the crisis of dissatisfied and demanding young physicians is to treat student medical professionals and nurses as a diplomatic immunity.

Instead of being obliged to take out debilitating loans, medical trainees need to register to have their years of training funded by the state.

In return, they would undertake to work specifically within the NHS for, say, 15 years. Their financial obligation would not be a monetary one however something deeper - a commitment to society.

Obviously, they could break this obligation if they wished - but then they would be liable to pay back part or all the cost of their training.

This would not only make sure more junior physicians remained in Britain, instead of emigrating, but might also have a deep psychological effect.

But the BMA do not trouble themselves with services like this. Instead, they concentrate on political posturing and myopic and impractical pay demands. It also contributes to a harmful generational divide in between older doctors and a new generation with various values.

Unless the union pertains to its senses, it will do countless damage to the NHS - the one organisation we are indicated to serve.