Doctor's strike tomorrow

[Avocado]

Is your GP surgery going on strike tomorrow ?

My husband just popped down/up/across to our GP surgery to put in a repeat prescription request and saw there was a big notice saying that they are NOT supporting the strike tomorrow as they are putting pateints' welfare first ! Sounds very nice of our surgery doctors !

[Pattidevans]

Oh!  I'd not heard anything about it.  Is it tomorrow?  I've got an appointment with the GP tomorrow... and well... I think my surgery can't be going on strike because I only made the appointment late yesterday afternoon.

[Avocado]

I think a lot of GPs are not going to be supporting the strike - at least according to the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9343356/Doctors-strike-three-quarters-of-surgeries-to-stay-open-as-usual.html  It doesn't say how many hospital doctors are supporting the strike.

[Idreamofchocolate]

I've just looked at our surgery website and they are open as normal. Good for them!

[Pattidevans]

Just looked at ours too and they are open.

[BATcher]

Unimpressively, my doctor's website says (with missing spaces):

Based on a strong mandatefrom the profession, BMA Council has taken a decision to call industrial actionover changes to the NHS pension scheme. The BMA’s model involves the provision of urgent and emergency careonly, and the postponement of non urgent work. The first day of action will take place on 21 June 2012. The doctor will be available in the surgery for any urgent medical attention.       

The BMA is taking this stepreluctantly and even now would far prefer to negotiate for a fairersolution.  Its decision to call a day ofaction reflects just how let down doctors feel by the governments’unwillingness to find a fairer approach to the latest pension changes and theirrefusal to acknowledge the major reforms of 2008 that made the NHS schemesustainable in the long term.   

Hard to sympathise when you hear on Radio 4 that retired doctors typically get a pension of about £68K a year...

[Avocado]

Hard to sympathise when you hear on Radio 4 that retired doctors typically get a pension of about £68K a year...

Especially when taxpayers are subsidising 80 per cent of doctors’ pensions, which means that doctors receive a return on their pension of £5 for every £1 they contribute.

[sedge]

I don't think all that many did strike.

No 2 daughter got a call at 5pm yesterday, asking if her 14yo could be at the hospital at 07.30 to have her tonsils out, as they'd had a cancellation.  She's been on the waiting list for several years (I think about when she started at senior school) She was ther, and they did it.  So they weren't on strike ! - which is just as well as apparently she's reacted badly to the anaesthetic (which runs in the family) so she ain't going anywhere else soon.

[Idreamofchocolate]

Bless....I hope she will be ok, Jenny x

[Venomous]

I hope she feels better soon Jenny

[Pattidevans]

Me too!

[Avocado]

And me too Jenny !

[sedge]

Thank you on her behalf.

Not that she deserves it actually; I think I'll just say it's a bit of poetic justice and leave it at that, rather than wash her dirty linen in public.