Junior doctors made headlines this week after they begrudgingly accepted the government’s pay deal. Two thirds of British Medical Association (BMA) members voted in favour of Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s offer, meaning medics across England will see a 22.3 per cent rise consolidated into their pay. Yet the move hasn’t entirely eased tensions between junior doctors and the government, with co-chair of the BMA Dr Vivek Trivedi insisting that medics will still ‘expect pay uplifts each and every year’. The co-chair of the doctors’ union went on to warn Streeting that wage increases must ‘occur in a timely fashion and at the pace that our members have asked for’ – otherwise, as Kate Andrews wrote, medics will consider striking again.
But the very latest issue plaguing medics across the country is one not of salary, but of semantics. Throughout the pay negotiation process – and long before the strikes – there have existed rumblings of discontent among medics about the label ‘junior doctors’. Many were frustrated that the public assumed that ‘junior’ referred to those who had only recently graduated from university – as opposed to viewing it as an umbrella term that included even senior registrars (doctors who are just a step below consultants). So, from today onwards, these medics will use the name ‘resident’ doctors instead, in a nod to their American colleagues who have long used the term.
The BMA has been making noises for a while about a change of label, and the move follows a vote by union members last year, who viewed the old descriptor as ‘misleading and demeaning’. In February, 91 per cent of paid-up BMA members supported the ‘resident’ title instead – and the government has even agreed to shift its terminology in line with the doctors’ union. ‘Part of restoring that value will be through deals that restore our pay, and we saw the start of that journey on Monday,’ insist BMA co-chairs Dr Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson: ‘But the language we use matters as well as pay.’
More cynical types have suggested the announcement is simply an exercise in smoke and mirrors by the doctors’ union.
Not everyone is thrilled about the shift. While some doctors are satisfied the change will mean they are better distinguished from physician associates (PAs) – and the BMA gushes that the move brings the UK closer to ‘international terminology’ – a number of medics have snubbed the name change. ‘It’s a bit Americanised’, one doctor told The Spectator, while another remarked: ‘”Resident doctors” is an Americanism that is old and wrongly implies that we’re going back to the old days when doctors lived in the hospital almost permanently.’ One senior practitioner implied the move was merely a window-dressing technique, adding: ‘In training circles we had dispensed with the term “junior doctors” years ago. We referred to them as trainees or “doctors in training”, which is what the GMC also use.’
More cynical types have suggested the announcement is simply an exercise in smoke and mirrors by the doctors’ union, which is facing backlash both from the vocal majority who did not vote in favour of the pay deal and members who feel the strike action has gone too far. Despite the tough talk from Dr Trivedi on Tuesday, it seems the BMA leadership is struggling to keep its membership on side and momentum up. Only 69 per cent of eligible union members took part in the vote, and despite threats about future strikes, there is a growing feeling that the union may not be able to get another mandate for industrial action for some time.
On the other side of the debate sit those who feel the union caved too soon. A ‘Doctors UK’ Reddit thread on the pay result was quick to fill with criticism from the self-titled ‘34 per cent’. ‘Well, at least my decision to leave the NHS is now much easier to make’, one user wrote, while someone else fumed: ‘Is it any surprise UK medicine is a complete shambles when a majority of doctors roll over when the government throws them a bone?’ Another simply commented on the industrial action coming to an end: ‘Depressing.’ It would appear that, even with their pay deal confirmed and a name change approved, the doctors’ union still isn’t satisfied quite yet.
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