Clare Gerada et al didn’t pay tuition fees to attend medical school, didn’t have >£50k student debt, nor ever faced the prospect of unemployment.
Context is everything.
I find this letter from so-called ‘senior figures’ utterly shameful.
These individuals haven’t lived through the 22% real-terms pay cut that today’s resident doctors have. They trained in an era of free tuition and affordable housing - yet now choose to pull the ladder up behind them, while accepting gongs and awards.
As a GP registrar, I find it especially disgraceful that the former chair of the RCGP Clare Gerada signed this. Under her leadership, physician associates rose unchecked in general practice while newly qualified GPs were left unemployed. Many GPs lost faith in the RCGP - and for good reason.
Resident Doctors will no longer subsidise the NHS with our pay.
The only ‘futile gesture’ here is a group of out-of-touch figures trying to lecture today’s workforce while turning their backs on the realities we face.