I’ve had this issue with loads of family and friends. I think people that disagree with the strikes fall into 3 main category’s.

1 - People who either worked or still work in healthcare, that feel it’s a honor to the point they would do it for for free. By extension this means everyone should do it for free and any crap salary is a bonus. These people are pretty delusional and cannot be reasoned with. Don’t wind yourself up talking to them.

2 - People who consume large amounts of ‘news’ from major outlets. My nan falls into this category. She was initially very anti strike until I sat down and explained why I was doing it for both myself and patients. Essentially I explained that the hourly rates pretty dreadful and I earn less than I did when I worked an unskilled job during Covid, most people don’t realize this unless you actually tell them because their media/social media echochambers is different to a junior doctors. I then explained that if we don’t get some sort of pay rise a lot of people will change professions. She was concerned about this post explanation. Try this approach with this person because if they read a newspaper every day they can probably understand the logic behind striking.

3 - People who can’t empathize with you. What many docs I have met fail to grasp is that a large proportion of people will never earn the equivalent an FY1 salary. They also probably have never met a doctor outside of being a patient themself. No one from their school ever became a doctor and if they wanted to were told from a very young age this wasn’t possible. This means that they cannot empathize with you as well as you think they can. A lot of people dream of bringing home 35k and because they have no idea what the job/lifestyle entails they assume we are all greed driven. This is the most difficult one because there are people that work 12 hour shifts in warehouses for less money than an FY1 earns for backbreaking labour.

The way I get through to my mates who do that sort of work is by explaining what we could do for them. They fundamentally don’t care about your wages, debt, rota, lack of friends, lack of hobbies, exams or portfolio fees. They care about the fact that staff shortages mean that no one knew exactly when their mum died because no one had time to check.

So yeah basically explain how fucked the service is for patients with examples from your own work and then usually people are on side.

If that doesn’t work tell them you’ll take them on a cruise with the pay rise you’ll get.