Funior doctors aren't greedy, we're trying to save the NHS

I know this news will come as a slap in the face for patients,” said health secretary Wes Streeting, talking about the news of renewed strike action, which I’m seeing - of all places - on my Instagram reel. That makes the attack feel ever so slightly more personal.

- HOLLY TARN

A newly qualified full-time doctor like me earns £38,831. In real terms, that's about 20 per cent less than in 2008. Adjust for the 1980s, and doctors were effectively earning what would be £85,000 today. So this kind of thing sticks in my craw.

Streeting insists doctors have been given enough. No further pay deal is on the table. Any new strike, he says, would be “preposterous”. But why is it? Those numbers alone tell a different story.

Years of below-inflation settlements have quietly stripped value from our pay. Even if the government kept pace with inflation from now on, it would take more than a decade to restore our salaries to where they were in 2008.

Critics argue all public sector jobs have faced cuts. But not all cuts are equal. MPs' pay, for instance, remains broadly in line with 2008 levels in real terms, and still more than twice my own salary.

Then there are the other costs, the ones rarely mentioned outside the profession. I left university £50,000 in debt from tuition fees alone. Those debts follow us throughout our careers.

Doctors are expected to pay for the privilege of progressing – postgraduate exams costing over £1,000 each, self-funded conferences, constant relocations, and compulsory memberships and indemnity fees, many of which should be reimbursed but rarely are.