I'm sorry but your comparing sectors such as law and banking to medicine. Ok there is a lot of work in those professions but in medicine you have that mental workload, have to carry out skilled procedures despite being knackered. It can also be very physically draining and I know of many people that have had a week on call and walked 10 miles a day but have been on their feet for 14 hours a day for 7-9 days straight. In fact if you compare hour to hour pay under the new contract it's more comparable with stacking shelves in a supermarket.
And Let's face it there aren't any careers where you have to make as many important decisions that effect people's lives and mistakes kill.
At the end of the day doctors are very privalaged people and all enter the career wanting to help people, and derive a lot of satisfaction out of that but if people aren't appreciated they aren't going to deal with the pressure and put up with the responsibility.
Also the argument that people should just leave if they can't put up with it is ridiculous people put in a lot of their sweat and tears into this profession over a long duration. They Give up a lot for this profession, normally from the age of 14 while their friends are playing football or out at the cinema they're revising to get grades and volunteer in nursing homes to get to where they want to be because this is the dedication it takes to even get to medical school. These are the people that are so dispondant now.
Also people always talk about back in the day how doctors used to work much longer shifts than now. I kid you not it was only yesterday a consultant told me that when he was a junior doctor he overdosed 40 patients with medication as in his day they were overworked( but no one cared at the time as it was seen as minor as mistakes happen every day). News flash doctors are still overworked and still make mistakes every day and guess what this contract will only make it worse.
People talk about how the profession is worse now than it was previously and You know what maybe you have a point if you take the view doctors should be good little worker bees who just work till they drop, do as their told and would never dream about striking.
But this new generation of doctors moving away from the old ways of Oxbridge taught scientists on wards think about the wider picture. They think about how what they do effects patients as a whole and think about how things can be improved rather than blindly following orders. They have learnt from history that tired doctors = worse outcomes and they feel that the professional thing to do is not to stand by as predecessors have done but to do what they feel is best for their patients.
By the way you have to be kidding that people aren't doing operations at the end of a long week. I once saw someone after already working about 65-70 hours over the past 5 days then get asked to cover a shift that someone called in sick. He had 2 hours to go home after his final 12 hour shift to have a shower and a meal with his wife before going in to assist in a 8 hour operation.
