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Times
2 days ago
- Health
- Times
Striking resident doctors can earn more than £100k
Resident doctors preparing to go on strike could earn more than £100,000 per year, and may pick up an additional £159 per hour for some weekend shifts. The resident doctors — formerly known as junior doctors — have voted to undertake more strike action this summer over pay and conditions. Up to 50,000 doctors will walk out of work for five consecutive days from 7am on July 25 until 7am on July 30, and are demanding the government increase their pay by 29 per cent. The starting rate for junior doctors is a salary of £38,831 after pay increases under Labour, but the highest ranking residents can earn up to £73,993 as a basic rate. For those working one in six weekends and one in eight night shifts, earnings can increase to £101,369 per annum, according to an analysis by The Daily Telegraph.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
Is resident doctors' pay down 20%, and aftermath of Gaza water queue strike
Update: Date: 10:23 BST Title: Are resident doctors right to say their pay is down 20%? Content: Rupert CareyBBC Verify fact-check editor We'll be looking into the claim by the doctors' union – the BMA – for higher pay for resident doctors in England. The government has offered a 5% rise but the BMA says pay – in real terms (so allowing for the impact of inflation) - is down 20% since 2008 and has voted in favour of strike action. There was an interesting discussion involving the BMA on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning about how they are getting to that figure and BBC Verify examining it. Update: Date: 10:14 BST Title: Monday's BBC Verify Live Content: Rob CorpBBC Verify Live editor Welcome to the live page where the BBC Verify team shares what it is doing each day. Our team will post their fact-checks, open-source intelligence work and data journalism here. This morning we're across these stories: If you missed it then do check out our most-read story of the weekend - North Korea's Benidorm-style resort welcomes its first Russian tourists - by clicking here.
The Independent
3 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
Nurses' average wages £8,000 lower than expected, study reveals
New research from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) reveals that nurses ' pay is £8,000 lower than if wages had kept pace with inflation since 2010, with junior staff particularly affected. The RCN's analysis indicates a severe erosion of nurses' pay over recent years, which is deepening the workforce crisis and impacting patient care. This report is released as tens of thousands of nursing staff vote in the RCN's pay award consultation, and follows the announcement of strike action by resident doctors later this month. The RCN urges the government to prioritise addressing the 'collapsing' wages for early-career nurses to boost recruitment and deliver its 10-Year Health Plan. The Department of Health and Social Care has agreed to meet with the British Medical Association (BMA) to discuss the upcoming five-day strike by resident doctors in England, scheduled to begin on 25 July.
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
Resident doctors risk losing the goodwill of the public by taking further strike action
SIR – As a retired surgeon, I was disappointed that the last government failed to resolve the doctors' strikes, despite their strong case for some restoration of pay, and the adverse effect that the prolonged industrial action had on waiting lists. After the Covid pandemic, the medical profession enjoyed public support. I believe that by taking further strike action (report, July 9), resident doctors risk losing that support. They should accept this year's recommendations and put forward a case for an above-inflation salary increase next year. In the meantime, the British Medical Association should continue to argue for improvements in working conditions and training, both of which fall substantially below those enjoyed by my generation. Peter Jones Marden, Kent SIR – I am a former nurse, who spent 17 years in health provision at a leading university and medical school. I am incensed by the junior doctors' new round of pay demands and strikes. They have been educated at great public expense for at least five years, not to mention the ongoing supervision they require as trainee doctors. They will go on to earn decent salaries, with the potential to work part-time as consultants for the NHS, while making thousands of pounds from private practice. Places for medical school are hugely competitive, and I expect that when being interviewed the majority of the candidates said that their main motivation was to help people. I am equally sure that, if asked, they would have denied even considering going on strike. Christine Tomblin Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire SIR – The most recent study into public perceptions of the Hippocratic Oath in the United Kingdom showed that 70 per cent of universities still insist that medical students swear to act in the best interests of their patients, both before and after they qualify. How, I wonder, does this sit with the proposed strike action by resident doctors? This will inevitably delay vital operations for patients who, in many cases, have been waiting for some time – in varying degrees of distress – for the procedure to take place. Taking an oath used to mean something; regrettably it seems that those days are over. Edward Aitchison Corbridge, Northumberland
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Crunching the data: are resident doctors in England badly paid?
Resident doctors in England have voted to strike for five days from 25 July, reigniting one of the NHS's most bitter industrial disputes. At the heart of the row is pay: the British Medical Association (BMA) says resident (formerly known as junior) doctors have seen their real earnings fall by more than a quarter since 2008. The government says the union's demands are unaffordable, and they've already received generous rises in recent years. So are strikes an 'unnecessary and unreasonable' move, in the words of the health secretary, Wes Streeting? Or a necessary step on the path to restore doctor's pay? After the global financial crisis of 2007-08, pay stagnated across the board in Britain. But resident doctors have had it worse than most. The average private sector worker now earns 7.5% more than they did in August 2010, when taking into account inflation (including housing costs and council tax rises). However, resident doctors' pay was still down 10.2% as of March this year. An average pay rise of 5.4% was awarded for this year, which will start appearing in wage slips next month. But even with that uplift, pay will still be below 2010 levels. Resident doctors are fully qualified in medicine but still undergoing postgraduate training. Their pathway starts with foundation training, before moving on to core training in a broad area, and then into training in a specific specialty of medicine, for example surgery. They aren't the only NHS workers who have seen their pay cut in real terms. Recent pay rises for residents means that consultants and nurses have seen proportionally larger cuts than some training levels – though different training levels have seen different cuts in their real-terms pay over the years. The BMA has said that real-terms pay for resident doctors has fallen by nearly 21% in the past 17 years – but their calculations use a measure of inflation called RPI. RPI is considered an outdated measure of inflation, and statisticians avoid using it. The government prefers a newer measure called CPI (the charts above use a similar measure – CPIH – which takes into account rising prices, as well as housing and council tax costs). RPI is generally higher than CPI – giving the unions a larger pay cut figure than government estimates. However, the government can't take the moral high ground here – it still uses RPI for several official calculations, including when calculating interest on the student loans that most resident doctors will be paying back each month. The chart below shows how using different measures of inflation, as well as different dates of comparison, can benefit either side in negotiations. It's impossible to compare the salary of resident doctors to other countries because different healthcare systems involve different training programmes. Pensions and other work benefits also differ between countries. There is some limited data comparing the pay of medical specialists – which includes consultants – but some countries such as the US and Australia are missing data for salaried professionals. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development had a go at comparing specialist doctor pay across countries – with the year 2020 being the latest estimates that included England. The figure shows that England is near the top of the pack (after taking into account how much things cost in different countries), but several countries including Germany and Ireland paid more. The figures line up with separate OECD data showing that the NHS has a relatively high rate of doctors moving abroad, with at least one in 10 UK-trained doctors practising abroad in the last five years. The BMA chair, Tom Dolphin, has said pay rises would help keep this figure down. Which countries are these UK-trained doctors going to? Figures from the General Medical Council found Australia was the most common destination for doctors leaving to practise outside the UK in 2023, followed by New Zealand, Ireland and Canada. However, the NHS is good at recruiting from overseas to replace leavers – 42% of doctors in the English NHS had a primary medical qualification from another country in 2023.
