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

This makes me truly angry. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is misusing public respect for physicians, mauling realities and pursuing Left-wing crusades with no regard for the expense to the health service.

Their pressing needs for greater pay make my profession, my long-lasting occupation, look tawdry, cynical and money-grubbing. There are moments when I nearly feel I might rip up my membership card in aggravation.

But it isn't simply my union that is behaving so disgracefully. The real perpetrator is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union negotiations given that pertaining to power has actually set off a greedy free-for-all.

Unless these outrageous needs 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 percent that was carried out on April 1 - a rise the union has dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 percent is currently above the rate of inflation, which is currently performing at 3.5 percent. In reality, the offer used to junior medical professionals (or 'resident doctors', as we're now expected to call them) provides significantly more, as they will get an additional ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing a typical boost in salary of 5.4 percent.

And it begins top of a gigantic 22 percent typical rise provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in 2015 in a desperate quote to put a stop to the continuous strikes, after they demanded a 30 per cent pay increase.

Their pressing needs for higher pay make my profession, my lifelong vocation, look tawdry, cynical and money-grubbing, says 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 unsuccessful in mollifying the transportation unions, the instructors and every other militant collective. The BMA validates its continued push for higher pay by declaring doctors are even worse off by about a quarter in real terms given that 2009.

The chairman of the BMA council, Professor Philip Banfield, sneers at the 4 per cent increase, saying it 'takes us backwards, pressing pay restoration even further into the distance,' and includes ominously: 'No one desires a go back to scenes of doctors on picket lines, however regretfully this looks even more most likely.'

What else did anybody expect? Unions are mandated to demand as much cash for their members as they can get. They don't exist to be reasonable or to accept compromise. And when Labour shopped them off, the unions picked up weak point. Prof Banfield understands there are more concessions to be won now, more pips to be squeezed.

But the NHS is not some personal, profit-making corporation, and this is not a battle between an exploited workforce and fat cat shareholders. Our beleaguered health service is moneyed by all of us - and it is on its knees.

This is something most medical professionals can recognise. Yet, over the previous years or more, the union has been more concerned with pursuing Left-wing programs than acting in the best interest of its members.

For example, the BMA's leadership has declined to back 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 last year, advised versus hurrying under-18s into gender transition treatment, such as puberty blockers, that they may later regret.

It needs to not be the BMA's role to introduce into a debate on the analysis of medical evidence. 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 rises worth 22 per cent by Mr Streeting in 2015

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

These consist of 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 the Uighur minority, just because a medical professional's union in the UK calls for it.

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

I would admire them far more if they put their energy into fact-checking their own claims. The BMA is susceptible to bandying about numbers that don't stand up to examination.

A few of their figures regarding incomes and inflation have been exposed, utilizing information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members consist of physicians with knowledge in medical data, it's a shame to everybody.

Most of all, I dislike them for wasting the general public assistance for doctors that we earned at great personal expense throughout the pandemic.

It is sickening that the real respect in which the medical profession was held simply 5 years earlier has actually been replaced to a big degree by cynicism and even by displeasure.

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

Junior doctors demonstrating outside Downing Street in 2015 during strike action

Medicine ought to be beyond contrast, not merely one of a raft of professions determined only by the financial rewards they bring.

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

Tony Blair's introduction of university fees in 1998 has actually led directly to the scenario today, where practically all my junior coworkers owe money by up to ₤ 100,000 - or perhaps more.

As a result, an increasing number of younger associates appear to see a profession in medication as mainly transactional.

They argue that not just have they worked for their degree, but they've also bought and paid for it. And that if they can earn more cash by quitting the NHS for the economic sector, or even by emigrating to practise abroad, for example in Australia, well, why shouldn't they?

It's a radically various outlook to that of my generation. As somebody who was lucky sufficient to have his six years of medical training funded by the state, I see my function as a psychiatrist as even more than just a job. It's my calling.

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I am deeply pleased with what I do. Nothing else could change it or provide me the exact same degree of complete satisfaction.

I personally believe that one method to resolve the crisis of discontented and demanding young doctors is to deal with student physicians and nurses as a special case.

Instead of being required to take out crippling loans, medical trainees need to register to have their years of training funded by the state.

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

Of course, they could break this obligation if they wanted - but then they would be responsible to repay part or all the cost of their training.

This would not just make sure more junior physicians stayed in Britain, rather than emigrating, however may also have a deep mental effect.

But the BMA don't bother themselves with services like this. Instead, they focus on political posturing and myopic and impractical pay needs. It also adds to an unsafe generational divide in between older medical professionals and a brand-new generation with different worths.

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