Doctors on Strike

The BMA are meeting to decide whether to strike or not, for the first time since 1975.

This is based on a ballot that the union for doctors (that's what it is not some 'professional body') held amongst its 130,000 members.  The subject of their ire is them having to contribute more to their gold-plated pension funds

They are so incensed that barely 35% could be bothered to vote.  Of that 2/3 were in favour of industrial action - by quick math that means that around 24% are in favour of going on strike or some kind of work to rule. 

Hardly a ringing endorsement of the BMA's leadership position.  This position essentially translates as the NHS is fine and efficient, doesn't need fixing, we want more money and we want to keep more of it but of course we always put the patients first, (unless it interferes with our other (more personal) aims!)

We must wait and see what a strike would mean .

• Strike - No hospital or GP cover?  How would that square with the Hippocratic Oath?
• No weekend work?  Most GPs don't do that anyway but they, along with Students are the least militant group with just 55% of those bothering to vote, being in favour of some kind of industrial action .  Consultants in A&E are pretty rare birds at the weekends, as well
• Emergency Service only? Around 45% of Consultants and the same level of Staff Grade/Speciality Doctors support this.  

If it does come to some industrial action , one wonders what the Labour Party (such keen advocates of short waiting lists (in theory anyway) and union rights) will do - support the BMA or support the austerity measures?  Because that's what this is about - it isn't about 'saving the NHS' - it is about adjusting pension provisions and making them more equitable and closer to what the country can afford. 

Think about it, where do you think the money for those gold plated pensions comes from - Yes, you're right - the NHS budget.  So less money contributed from doctors and other health workers means less money spent on front line care.

Incidentally,
One of the questions in the initial ballot, related to what would be the result of the current proposals.  Would they make you bring your retirement age forward, draw pension earlier, neither or not applicable?  Among those under 30 years of age, 20.5% said it would cause them to bring their retirement forward.  I can't work out what that means.  Pensions are so good that they can retire VERY early or they didn't understand the question.  Must be something else because either response is scary!

 

Breast Implants - again - The GMC role

Please don't think I am fixated on breasts.  Its the implants I am talking about.  And I am not fixated on those, either!

Where is the illustrious General Medical Council or the army of ambulance-chasing lawyers, in all of this?

Surely the plastic surgeons who fitted (installed?) these implants have a duty of care to their patients?  Following on from this, if they abdicate this responsibility then wouldn't that put them in breach of medical ethics?  (Or for plastic surgeons, is ethics a place you path thru on the way to thuffolk? -sorry, couldn't resist)

Why isn't the GMC, jumping up and threatening all of these surgeons with disciplinary hearings which could lead to a loss of license to practice?  And doing so as a matter of urgency?

After all, the GMC are always quick to get in front of the media when someone in Government suggests that a GP or a precious consultant should maybe be paid a little less  or work a little more (weekends, maybe?).  GPs earn more than £60,000 a year with  very many earning more than £100,000 a year.  Who knows what these plastic surgeons are earning.

Maybe this is an area where the government should impose regulation.  Patently, self-regulation isn't working!

Where too, are all those ambulance chasers?  Do they maybe share a 'lodge' with their professional colleagues and don't want to upset them?  Why are they not advertising on daytime TV?

Maybe it is all because the biased-BBC and ITV seem to have decided that the clearing up of this problem is the responsibility of the taxpayer funded NHS?

All I see on the TV slots about this, is a government spokesperson and then a private plastic surgery patient.  The latter are NEVER challenged on why I should put my hand in my pocket because their vanity operation has the potential to go wrong.  Why should funding be diverted from the care of the elderly or cancer patients (the list goes on) to remove and then replace (because the latter is also demanded) something that these individuals undertook themselves, for their own selfish benefit?

Corporate responsibility in the shape of some (not all) of the plastic surgeons,  seems to have fled the scene. 

Where is the personal responsibility in this?

If I buy anything, from a private supplier, let's say a car, the contract is between me and the company.  The UK government isn't in the picture (and really that's the way I want it).  If the brakes are faulty or the gearbox doesn't function I go back to the car dealer or maybe the manufacturer.  I don't go to HM Government or the Ministry of Transport!

What have we come to?