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

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Junior medical professionals are threatening to strike once 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 truly mad. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is squandering public regard for doctors, crushing facts and crusades with no regard for the cost to the health service.

Their insatiable demands for greater pay make my occupation, my lifelong occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing. There are minutes when I practically feel I could rip up my subscription card in aggravation.

But it isn't simply my union that is acting so disgracefully. The genuine perpetrator is the Labour federal government, whose ineptitude in union negotiations since coming to power has activated a greedy free-for-all.

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

The flashpoint this month is the BMA's need for a pay boost better than the 4 per cent that was carried out on April 1 - an increase the union has dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 percent is already above the rate of inflation, which is currently running at 3.5 per cent. In truth, the deal offered to junior physicians (or 'resident doctors', as we're now expected to call them) provides substantially more, as they will receive an extra ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing a typical boost in salary of 5.4 percent.

And it begins top of a gigantic 22 percent average rise provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting last year in a desperate quote to stop the continuous strikes, after they demanded a 30 per cent pay increase.

Their insatiable demands for greater pay make my occupation, my long-lasting occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing, states Dr Max Pemberton

Junior physician 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 - just as surrender has actually proved not successful in mollifying the transportation unions, the teachers and every other militant cumulative. The BMA justifies its ongoing push for greater pay by claiming doctors are worse off by about a quarter in real terms given that 2009.

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

What else did anybody anticipate? Unions are mandated to demand as much cash for their members as they can get. They don't exist to be sensible or to embrace compromise. And when Labour attempted to purchase them off, the unions picked up weak point. Prof Banfield knows there are more concessions to be won now, more pips to be squeezed.

But the NHS is not some private, profit-making corporation, and this is not a fight in between an exploited labor force and fat cat investors. Our beleaguered health service is moneyed by all of us - and it is on its knees.

This is something most doctors can acknowledge. Yet, over the past years or more, the union has been more worried with pursuing Left-wing programs than acting in the very best 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 children and young individuals.

The findings by Dr Hilary Cass, released in 2015, recommended against hurrying under-18s into gender shift treatment, such as puberty blockers, that they might later be sorry for.

It ought to not be the BMA's role to introduce into an argument on the analysis of medical proof. That's what the Royal Colleges are for.

Sir Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. This year's pay rise comes after resident doctors were granted increases worth 22 per cent by Mr Streeting in 2015

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

These consist of require 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, simply due to the fact that a medical professional's union in the UK calls for it.

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

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

Some of their figures regarding incomes and inflation have been debunked, using data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members consist of medical professionals with proficiency in medical stats, it's a shame to everyone.

Most of all, I detest them for wasting the public support for doctors that we earned at excellent personal expense during the pandemic.

It is sickening that the genuine regard in which the medical occupation was held just 5 years ago has actually been replaced to a large degree by cynicism and even by disapproval.

Small marvel, then, that numerous junior medical professionals grumble that their good friends with tasks in tech or banking are much better off than they are.

Junior medical professionals showing outside Downing Street in 2015 during strike action

Medicine ought to be beyond comparison, 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, given that before the 2010 union government.

Tony Blair's intro of university charges in 1998 has led directly to the situation today, where almost all my junior associates are in financial obligation by approximately ₤ 100,000 - and even more.

As an outcome, an increasing variety of more youthful associates seem to see a profession in medicine as mainly transactional.

They argue that not just have they worked for their degree, however they have actually likewise purchased and spent for it. And that if they can make more money by giving up the NHS for the private sector, or perhaps by emigrating to practice abroad, for example in Australia, well, why should not 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 moneyed by the state, I see my function as a psychiatrist as far more than just a task. It's my calling.

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I am deeply proud of what I do. Nothing else could replace it or offer me the very same degree of satisfaction.

I personally believe that one way to fix the crisis of dissatisfied and demanding young physicians is to treat trainee medical professionals and nurses as a diplomatic immunity.

Instead of being obliged to get debilitating loans, medical students need to sign up to have their years of training moneyed by the state.

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

Obviously, they might break this responsibility if they wished - however then they would be responsible to pay back part or all the expense of their training.

This would not just ensure more junior doctors stayed in Britain, instead of emigrating, but might also have a deep psychological impact.