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

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

This makes me really angry. My medical union, the Association (BMA), is misusing public regard for physicians, mauling realities and pursuing Left-wing crusades with no regard for the expense to the health service.

Their insatiable needs for higher pay make my occupation, my long-lasting occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing. There are minutes when I almost feel I might rip up my membership card in frustration.

But it isn't just my union that is behaving so disgracefully. The genuine perpetrator is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union settlements since 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 much better than the 4 percent that was carried out on April 1 - a rise the union has dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 percent is already above the rate of inflation, which is presently running at 3.5 percent. In fact, the deal offered to junior doctors (or 'resident doctors', as we're now supposed to call them) offers substantially more, as they will get an additional ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing an average increase in salary of 5.4 per cent.

And it comes on top of a gigantic 22 per cent average rise provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in 2015 in a desperate bid to put a stop to the continuous strikes, after they required a 30 per cent pay rise.

Their pressing demands for greater pay make my profession, my lifelong occupation, 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, naturally - simply as surrender has actually proved unsuccessful in mollifying the transportation unions, the teachers and every other militant cumulative. The BMA validates its ongoing push for greater pay by declaring medical professionals are even worse off by about a quarter in genuine terms considering that 2009.

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

What else did anyone expect? Unions are mandated to require as much money for their members as they can get. They don't exist to be reasonable or to embrace compromise. And when Labour shopped them off, the unions noticed weak point. Prof Banfield knows 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 fight between an exploited labor force and fat cat shareholders. Our beleaguered health service is moneyed by all of us - and it is on its knees.

This is something most medical professionals can identify. Yet, over the previous years or more, the union has actually been more concerned with pursuing Left-wing agendas than acting in the finest interest of its members.

For circumstances, the BMA's leadership has refused to back the Cass Review, commissioned by the NHS as a report into gender identity services for children and young people.

The findings by Dr Hilary Cass, released last year, advised against rushing under-18s into gender shift treatment, such as adolescence blockers, that they may later regret.

It should not be the BMA's function to launch 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 medical professionals were granted rises worth 22 per cent by Mr Streeting last year

The union has actually overstepped its bounds, and I'm seriously unhappy about paying my membership to an organisation that makes political statements in my name.

These consist of calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, for instance, 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, even if a medical professional's union in the UK calls for it.

This is cheap virtue-signalling, done for no other factor than to make the BMA officers feel excellent about themselves.

I would appreciate them a lot more if they put their energy into fact-checking their own claims. The BMA is vulnerable to bandying about numbers that do not withstand examination.

Some of their figures regarding earnings and inflation have actually been unmasked, using information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members include doctors with expertise in medical statistics, it's a humiliation to everyone.

Most of all, I detest them for wasting the general public assistance for medical professionals that we made at excellent individual expense throughout the pandemic.

It is sickening that the real respect in which the medical occupation was held simply 5 years earlier has been changed to a large degree by cynicism and even by displeasure.

Small wonder, then, that many junior physicians whine that their pals with tasks in tech or banking are much better off than they are.

Junior doctors showing outside Downing Street last year during strike action

Medicine ought to be beyond contrast, not simply among a raft of professions measured only by the financial rewards they bring.

This crisis has been brewing a long period of time, since before the 2010 union government.

Tony Blair's introduction of university fees in 1998 has led straight to the situation today, where almost all my junior coworkers owe money by approximately ₤ 100,000 - and even more.

As an outcome, an increasing variety of younger associates appear to see a career in medicine as primarily transactional.

They argue that not just have they worked for their degree, but they've also purchased and spent for it. Which if they can earn more cash by stopping the NHS for the economic sector, or even by emigrating to practise abroad, for example in Australia, well, why shouldn't they?

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

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

I personally believe that a person method to fix the crisis of discontented and demanding young medical professionals is to treat trainee doctors and nurses as a diplomatic immunity.

Instead of being obliged to secure crippling loans, medical trainees need to sign up to have their years of training moneyed by the state.

In return, they would carry out to work solely within the NHS for, say, 15 years. Their debt would not be a monetary one but something deeper - a commitment to society.

Naturally, they might break this commitment if they wished - but then they would be accountable to repay part or all the cost of their training.

This would not only guarantee more junior physicians remained in Britain, rather than emigrating, however may also have a deep mental impact.

But the BMA do not trouble themselves with services like this. Instead, they focus on political posturing and myopic and impractical pay demands. It also adds to a hazardous generational divide in between older physicians and a new generation with different values.

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