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Junior doctors are threatening to strike again. So what, you might say? When are they not threatening a walk-out? In the past 2 years, they have actually taken commercial action 11 times.

This makes me really upset. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is wasting public regard for doctors, battering truths and pursuing Left-wing crusades without any regard for the cost to the health service.
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Their pressing needs for higher pay make my occupation, my lifelong vocation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing. There are minutes when I nearly feel I might rip up my subscription card in disappointment.

But it isn't simply my union that is acting so disgracefully. The real culprit is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union settlements since concerning power has activated a greedy free-for-all.

Unless these outrageous demands can be brought under control, I fear the NHS might be bankrupted.

The flashpoint this month is the BMA's demand for a pay increase much better than the 4 per cent that was carried out on April 1 - an increase the union has actually dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 per cent is currently above the rate of inflation, which is presently performing at 3.5 per cent. In fact, the deal provided to junior doctors (or 'resident physicians', as we're now expected to call them) supplies substantially more, as they will get an additional ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing an average increase in wage of 5.4 per cent.

And it comes on top of an enormous 22 per cent average rise served up by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in 2015 in a desperate bid to stop the continuous strikes, after they required a 30 percent pay increase.

Their pressing demands for higher pay make my occupation, my lifelong occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing, states Dr Max Pemberton

Junior medical professional members of the British Medical Association (BMA) on the picket line outside the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle in 2023

That craven capitulation by Labour didn't work, obviously - simply as surrender has proved not successful in mollifying the transportation unions, the instructors and every other militant cumulative. The BMA justifies its continued push for higher pay by declaring medical professionals are worse off by about a quarter in genuine terms because 2009.

The chairman of the BMA council, Professor Philip Banfield, sneers at the 4 per cent increase, saying it 'takes us backwards, pressing pay remediation even further into the range,' and includes ominously: 'No one desires a return to scenes of physicians on picket lines, but sadly this looks far more most likely.'

What else did anybody expect? Unions are mandated to require as much cash for their members as they can get. They do not exist to be affordable or to embrace compromise. And when Labour shopped them off, the unions sensed weakness. Prof Banfield understands there are more concessions to be won now, more pips to be squeezed.

But the NHS is not some private, profit-making corporation, and this is not a battle in between a made use of labor force and fat feline investors. Our beleaguered health service is moneyed by all of us - and it is on its knees.

This is something most physicians can recognise. Yet, over the previous decade or more, the union has actually been more worried with pursuing Left-wing programs than acting in the very best interest of its members.

For example, the BMA's management has actually refused to endorse the Cass Review, commissioned by the NHS as a report into gender identity services for children and youths.

The findings by Dr Hilary Cass, released in 2015, hurrying under-18s into gender transition treatment, such as puberty blockers, that they may later regret.

It should not be the BMA's function to release into a dispute on the interpretation of medical proof. That's what the Royal Colleges are for.

Sir Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. This year's pay increase follows resident doctors were granted increases worth 22 per cent by Mr Streeting in 2015

The union has exceeded its bounds, and I'm seriously dissatisfied about paying my membership to an organisation that makes political statements in my name.

These include require a ceasefire in Gaza, for instance, and criticism of China for human rights abuses - as if Hamas is going to return Israeli hostages or Beijing is going to stop persecuting the Uighur minority, simply because a medical professional's union in the UK requires it.

This is inexpensive virtue-signalling, done for no other reason than to make the BMA execs feel excellent about themselves.

I would admire them much more if they put their energy into fact-checking their own claims. The BMA is susceptible to bandying about numbers that do not withstand scrutiny.

A few of their figures relating to earnings and inflation have been unmasked, using information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members include medical professionals with knowledge in medical data, it's a humiliation to everybody.

Most of all, I dislike them for squandering the general public assistance for doctors that we earned at great individual expense during the pandemic.

It is sickening that the real respect in which the medical occupation was held just five years ago has actually been changed to a large degree by cynicism and even by disapproval.

Small marvel, then, that many junior doctors grumble that their pals with jobs in tech or banking are better off than they are.

Junior doctors demonstrating outside Downing Street last year during strike action

Medicine should be beyond contrast, not simply one of a raft of careers determined only by the monetary rewards they bring.

This crisis has been brewing a long period of time, because before the 2010 union federal government.

Tony Blair's intro of university charges in 1998 has actually led directly to the circumstance today, where virtually all my junior coworkers are in financial obligation by up to ₤ 100,000 - and even more.

As a result, an increasing variety of more youthful coworkers appear to see a profession in medicine as mainly transactional.

They argue that not just have they worked for their degree, but they have actually likewise purchased and paid for it. Which if they can earn more cash by stopping the NHS for the personal sector, or perhaps by emigrating to practise abroad, for instance in Australia, well, why shouldn't they?

It's a radically different outlook to that of my generation. As somebody who was fortunate enough to have his six years of medical training moneyed by the state, I see my function as a psychiatrist as far more than simply a task. It's my calling.

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I am deeply proud of what I do. Nothing else might replace it or offer me the exact same degree of satisfaction.

I personally believe that one method to solve the crisis of disappointed and requiring young physicians is to treat student doctors and nurses as a special case.

Instead of being obliged to get crippling loans, medical students ought to sign up to have their years of training moneyed by the state.

In return, they would carry out to work exclusively within the NHS for, state, 15 years. Their debt would not be a monetary one but something deeper - a responsibility to society.

Of course, they could break this responsibility if they wanted - however then they would be liable to repay part or all the expense of their training.

This would not just ensure more junior medical professionals stayed in Britain, instead of emigrating, however might also have a deep psychological impact.

But the BMA don't trouble themselves with services like this. Instead, they focus on political posturing and myopic and impractical pay needs. It also adds to a hazardous generational divide between older physicians and a new generation with various values.

Unless the union comes to its senses, it will do countless harm to the NHS - the one organisation we are implied to serve.
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