Junior doctors are being paid as little as £14 an hour to carry out vital operations, a campaign reveals.
As medics today begin a four-day strike, The British Medical Association exposes the shocking truth about wages.
It said: “Is this a fair price to provide patients with high-quality healthcare?”
In a poll, most back the strikes. But the Tories still refuse to hold pay talks.
The government has been accused of providing high quality health care on the cheap by doctors whose real-term pay has been slashed by years of cuts.
As one of the biggest strikes by medics starts today with warnings of cancelled appointments and operations, a campaign is launched showing junior staff are on as little as £14 an hour for saving lives.
And while stubborn Health Secretary Steve Barclay refuses to discuss pay with doctors until they drop their plea for a 35% rise, a new poll shows most of the public support the four-day walk-out.
The British Medical Association insists their demand is merely “pay restoration” after the Tories have driven down their real-term wages by a quarter since taking power.
Its poster campaign shows three doctors carrying out an hour-long appendix operation. One has 10 years experience and earns £28 in that hour, another has seven years and gets £24.46 while the third has a year’s service and earns £14.09.
The poster asks “is this a fair price to provide patients with high quality healthcare”?
BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said in a statement: “It is appalling that this government feels paying three junior doctors £66.55 between them for work of this value, is justified.
“This is highly skilled work requiring years of study and intensive training in a high-pressure environment. The job can be a matter of life and death. Why then has the Government allowed junior doctor pay to be cut in real terms by over a quarter in the last 15 years?
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“Full pay restoration is not a high price to pay for healthcare that junior doctors deliver. These same three doctors would still only be paid around £90 between them, still extremely good value. We are always ready to talk and Mr Barclay can stop the strikes at any time if he proposes a credible offer.”
Dr Jennifer Barclay, who works in the North West and gets around £19 an hour, said: “I want doctors treating my loved ones to be well rested and able to provide the best care possible. I don’t want them to be burnt out or worried about paying the bills whilst making life and death decisions.
“Surely this life, the training, responsibility, debt and crushing workload is worth more than £19 per hour?” The BMA said junior doctors start on salaries of between £25,000 and £30,000, compared to an MP’s £86,584.
But they have had real-terms pay cut of 26.1% from 2008 to 2023.
Ipsos polling today shows 54% of the public back the strike, which will go on until Sunday.
That is up 3% on last month. Just 26% oppose the action.
The walk-outs are expected to lead to 350,000 planned hospital appointments being axed and will have a knock-on effect on GPs and pharmacy services.
NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor said: “These are the most significant strikes the NHS has ever had to manage with huge disruption to key frontline services expected so that urgent and emergency care can be prioritised. We should consider asking the Government and the trade unions to call in Acas, because if anything the positions seem to have hardened over the last few days.”
Mr Barclay claimed the 35% pay rise is “unreasonable”. He said: “It would result in some junior doctors receiving a rise of over £20,000. If the BMA is willing to move from this position and cancel strikes we can resume talks. The walkouts risk patient safety.”
Junior doctors were put on new contracts from 2019 to 2023. Mr Barclay claimed they will get an 8% uplift during that time. But the BMA said 2023 uplift was just 2%.
1. How their pay compares
The average earnings for a junior doctor in England in the year to March 2022 were just over £55,000, according to the Nuffield Trust.
They earn above the £33,000 average pay in England, but the Trust estimates since 2011 their pay has fallen behind inflation by nearly £5,000.
This is a smaller fall than estimates used by the BMA but by all measures much larger than falls seen by most other workers.
Average pay can be contested and directly comparable data between jobs hard to come by.
The RMT union says that the average rail worker earns £33,000.
And Office for National Statistics data shows that the average secondary school teacher earned just under £41,000 a year last April.
The Institute for Government put the median civil servant salary at £30,000
last year.
The basic pay for Members of Parliament is £86,584.
Those in Government positions get extra pay for ministerial roles.
2. Who's striking?
The bulk of NHS staff – including nurses and paramedics, but not doctors or dentists – are considering an offer from the Government after three months of strikes.
If the deal is rejected it could be withdrawn and new strikes planned.
Teachers in England will strike on April 27 and May 2 after National Education Union members rejected a pay offer.
Civil service staff in the PCS union are holding an “all out” strike day on April 28.
And talks between Royal Mail and postal workers ended without a deal last week, raising the prospect of further strikes.
3. The 'junior' docs
Junior doctors remain “junior” for eight to 20 years, though longer if they do research.
There are about 80,000 junior doctors in the NHS and about 60,000 are eligible to strike.
Dr Jennifer Barclay, a surgical doctor in the North West, said: “There is nothing ‘junior’ about the work I have done. I’ll be treating patients, assessing new patients, preparing patients for surgery and answering never-ending bleeps, when we have to run to theatre.
'An appendicectomy like the one in this advert would be a typical case.”
Low wages force younger medics to vote with feet
By Dr Mike Greenhalgh, Trauma and orthapedic surgery regsitrar
IT’S a Monday night, 8pm, the first of my four night shifts. I’m a junior doctor, but as a registrar I will be the most senior doctor in my department tonight.
I take a handover from the doctors ending their day shift. It has been as busy as ever. One doctor is only just eating their lunch and there are still patients waiting to be seen. A four-hour wait in the Emergency Department was the exception a few short years ago; a wait of 12 hours or more is now the norm.
My first patient is a child who has broken their arm in a fall at school. I try to reassure worried parents. What I didn’t say is the operating list is already full to bursting and whilst it’s right to prioritise their child, I need to tell someone else they’ll have to wait at least another day.
On the shift with me is a doctor in their second year of practice. It’s their first night with us and they’re nervous. I reassure them, but don’t mention I’m worried too.
There are a lot of patients to see on the ward and still waiting in A&E and we head there first to put a plaster cast on a broken wrist.
Halfway through the 12-hour shift and I feel we are making some headway.
There has been a steady stream of patients but we agree after the next one we will have a quick break. That was tempting fate, an emergency alert goes off and we scramble to receive a seriously injured patient who has been in a car crash. He has a bad head injury as well as broken bones and whilst we dress his wounds, put on plaster cast and arrange for a scan, he needs more specialised treatment at another hospital.
I call ahead to my counterpart to describe the injuries and ask them how things are on their end. I already know the answer – it’s as bad there as anywhere, in fact everywhere.
As I head to the ward I stop in my tracks. There are patients lined up along the corridor here too, almost reaching the hospital’s coffee shop. This I have never seen before, even at the height of Covid.
With about an hour to go we finally sit down with a cup of tea and start to check through blood test results ready to hand over to the day team.
As we work, I ask my colleague what they plan to do at the end of their second year of practice.
They laugh. What they really want is a break. They now plan to travel to Australia to work as a doctor there.
I’ve heard this so many times before and I can’t really blame them.
I’m striking because enough is enough, without addressing the pay of junior doctors they will continue to vote with their feet and leave our NHS, at a time where we need all the doctors we can get.
