To think that not all doctors are badly paid - junior ones, yes, but not all?

Was that the money she was complaining about, the cost of milk? Or the hassle of having to go out?

I read your message before the user name and guessed it would be you writing! I think I have been on this board for too long!

Anyway, I’m a hospital consultant of 30 years. I am full-time NHS and have never done any private work and do not want to. I think my salary is fair and I never complain about it. It is different for resident doctors.

I agree by the way that there are many rude NHS staff and it depresses me like hell. Being polite and kind to patients, however difficult a day you have had, is the absolute minimum required for our work.

I don't think Doctors, whatever level they are at in their careers, are paid enough for what they do. I don't agree that those in entertainment industries, like footballers or 'influencers', should earn what they do - but that's life.

Medicine is a choice, it's not like the path is unknown, and yet people still apply. If someone wants a CEO salary of a multinational corp - go do that then. Those jobs, whilst not life endangering, aren't a walk in the park either. Life isn't fair, we don't get what we want, but ultimately those entering Medicine are doing it by choice.

Last paragraph nails it.

Previous generation of consultants were considerably (hugely) better paid. I think some of the confusion/stereotyping comes from people not realising the pay structure has changed.

Still well paid, but an NHS consultant cannot afford big house, private schools and luxury holidays on their salary now - in the past, this was totally doable and that’s what people seem to mentally associate with a consultant salary.

Taxation obviously. I was responding to your inaccurate claim that the government doesn’t run the NHS.

@SnakesAndArrows - where do you think the government gets its money from?

😂
Perhaps I just know some very rich doctors. But all the examples I gave are real ones 👍😀

Eh? My dh has been a Consultant for 25 years now, we dont live anything like that lifestyle 😂 in fact we could only dream of it! Wheres he gone wrong 🤔

We have one car between us, so he cycles to the hospital every day, if his clinic is in the hospital in the next town then he catches the bus. We are only on holiday now because friends whose household income is very significantly higher than ours (they are in banking and HR), invited us to their holiday home.

It’s disingenuous to say that the government doesn’t run the NHS. NHSE is directed by the DHSC. The NHS gets all its money from the government.

The abolition of NHSE (not a bad thing IMO) will put NHSE’s current functions into DHSC, giving the government more direct control.

The Government does not run the NHS. It is run by NHS England. People with significant NHS and clinical experience on the whole, who do not do a very good job and thankfully it's being sljmmed down.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/nhs-england-board/our-leadership-team/

Let's see: Telford, Shropshire, East Kent, Nottingham, etc. None of those Trusts were run by politicians, none of their Dirdctors of Children's and Women's Services would have had insignificant NHS/Clinical experience.

Those who leave the NHS for The Antipodes, Canada, etc, are not going to work in a like for like system. I'm all for bringing back state funded bursaries/grants for medics and nurses but it would come with the caveat that once qualified ten years had to be served for the NHS, otherwise the money had to be paid back - illness excepted.

No other country has an NHS System - they largely have more sense and their healthcare isn't suffused with political ideology to the same extent.

PS: the country is bankrupt. There is no money.

I think they lost a lot of sympathy with some of the claims they were making eg that they get paid less than people working in Pret coffee shops.
That was nonsense as they weren't comparing like with like. They were comparing the 'hourly rate' for a just qualified doctor with zero experience (FY1) & not including additional payments eg shift premiums that make up their salary. Then implying that all junior doctors receive that hourly rate.

They then compared that to the hourly rate for Pret staff in a supervisor role in a hot spot location (usually air side location where staff need additional security checks, need a UK passport & need to drive due to unsociable hours) so only a tiny number actually receive that hourly rate.

There was an assumption that they are better & more valuable than anyone else & an assumption that the public are thick.

All the newly graduated medics & uni students I've met have been deeply unpleasant & arrogant young people who seem to think they are owed something by society.

The problem is resentment. On MN if someone isn’t being paid minimum wage then they’re clearly just greedy, regardless of what they do or how they got there.

I’ve just spent four months in hospital and been through major surgery. And I earn a shit salary. And frankly I don’t care how much the drs are paid, my surgeon is internationally renowned, I don’t care if he goes home to play on his tennis court before taking a dip in his swimming pool, good luck to him.

cost of living doesn’t change just because you earn more, it’s just that you buy different. If you earn more then your cost of living still goes up, so why shouldn’t you be entitled to a raise?

it’s not a race to the bottom.

Where do we 'often hear 'doctors are underpaid' though?

Not in my world and other posters are asking where you are hearing this as it seems few hear this on the daily.

Most of your presented facts can be applied to a lot of jobs/professions regarding wages. I'm confused.

Why do you think only doctors out of the professions pay for their exams? Solicitors pay for their exams £5k+), architects pay for their exams, accountants pay for their exams, chartered surveyors pay for their exams… most professions also have to pay for professional membership fees (law society, RIBA, RICS etc) and professional indemnity insurance (many thousands for solicitors for eg). Solicitors do 4 or 5 years of university/law school, 2 years further training before qualification, will need about another 7-8 years post qualification experience before partnership (or more)… barristers rarely take silk before 15 years post qualification experience. doctors aren’t some special breed. They are just trained professionals like many others. I agree if they fuck up they can kill people but frankly so can architects and engineers.

Every doctor I know is absolutely loaded 👍 Nepal for 3 weeks? No problem. Aus/NZ for a month? Why not? Seville for a long weekend? Yep 😀 Second sports car for the wife? Not a problem

I’ve recently had a cataract operation which had some complications due to another condition. I had absolutely amazing treatment on the NHS. My surgeon has saved my sight in the last year and I can’t put a price on that.

I think it’s important that doctors are properly paid for the incredible job that they do to reflect the level of immense responsibility that they have. A lawyer or accountant won’t blind you or potentially kill you if they make a mistake.

Let's think about the implications of what you've just told us all.

'I don't want to pay more for something that isn't fit for purpose'
Have you considered perhaps that it is not fit for purpose because there isn't enough investment in the correct places? Let's be very clear about one thing: the government has money already - they do not need to take more from the taxpayer.

Instead, the government is investing in roles such as physician associates to do doctor work but cheaper - which ultimately means it takes a PA and a doctor to review what would be a simple treatment plan, so in fact not cheaper at all.

Our biggest problem, perhaps, is that our healthcare system is run by those who don't actually have any experience working in healthcare. There is no other organisation that would hire people without a background in the industry to run it. So why is the NHS run by politicians who have zero knowledge of what it takes to run a successful healthcare system? This is why the standards are poor, because the people allocating the money do not know where money needs to be and where it shouldn't be.

Countless, pointless reviews because there is a deep lack of understanding of what to do - 'let's do a review so it looks like we're doing something' is all it is. And before you know it, a government's time is up before they've even achieved anything. It's pathetic, it really is, that one of the richest countries in the world cannot meet the basic needs of its population. It's disgraceful.

Eg in times gone by Old Timey Doctor doesn't need to do Safety Training A. When Patient A arrives dying of problem A (if they even present to Doctor at all), Doctor doesn't do much because there isn't much to do. When Patient A dies, family don't ask questions and Doctor doesn't need to engage in any reflective or investigative process. Doctor does not have to see Patient A in clinic. Doctor doesn't have to attend Safety / Improvement / Governance meetings related to problem A. Doctor doesn't have to engage in CPD / appraisal process. Doctor doesn't have to interpret and report investigations which aren't in use or haven't been invented yet. Doctor is also a man with a wife at home looking after the kids so he gets to the top of his career fast and earns well fast. He also gets to do it in one place, very often under the mentorship of a select few who teach him their ways consistently (the firm).

Compare this to Modern Doctor. Firstly Modern Doctor is a woman and her partner/spouse also has to work for a roof over their heads because house prices are so high now so she will usually be stuck in relatively low paid training (cough service provision) for decades if she has kids. As well as all of Old Timey Doctor's medicine she also has to learn and deliver all the new medicine that exists now, to a cohort of patients who are way more complicated and sick. And there are far more of them per Doctor, than there used to be. Advanced and complex treatment now exists for problem A so patients A, B, C and D do not die. They all need to be cared for acutely, with a longer inpatient stay, developing more complications, and all need to later be seen in clinic. Due to surviving they all have the opportunity to develop problem B/C/etc as well. Modern Doctor does have to do lots of safety training and lots of professional development. There is no firm /mentorship model in place so she moves from place to place constantly, never settling and noone takes her under their wing or has a consistent way of doing things. If she wants to practice the best medicine she must constantly research and memorise the latest evidence / guidelines about diagnosis and treatment herself. And she will be scrutinised if things go wrong. She does very much have to attend and present at (therefore prepare for) safety / improvement / governance meetings. And do an appraisal with all the prerequisite paperwork at least every year. And earns much less in real terms than Old Timey Doctor.

Clearly Modern Medicine is better for patients, or at least the whole staying alive part (not universally a good thing). Doctors should be accountable and should learn and develop so that they are doing good medicine. Nevertheless, working life has gotten worse and much busier for Doctors as a result, and at the same time their pay has been considerably eroded.

Hmmm.. the years of training and experience gained over those years counts for nothing?

I doubt this will get much sympathy but there is also a financial penalty from having to work less than full time to avoid burnout in the current stressful conditions of the NHS.

It's basically compressed hours without the pay preservation. As demands relentlessly increase - due to an aging sick population but also healthcare advancement and increased governance / medicolegal expectations - all healthcare staff (not only doctors) are having to deliver more care to more patients, and do more work overall, without more renumeration.

The added stressful, demanding nature of the shifts/work, and the resulting push of professional development, professional admin, clinical paperwork and even safety functions like checking labs get pushed outside of working hours - can mean that it's just not possible to cope in the role "full time". You do the same amount of actual patient care /work as previous counterparts, but over a compressed less than full time schedule (and much of it in your own "free time"), for less than full time pay.

I think this is particularly the case for GPs.

Consultant 3 is being honest about not being there. Everyone who works with consultants 1 and 2 knows exactly where they are when not in the NHS clinics/wards - plus it is advertised on the website of private hospitals. And the waiting list for 3 is much shorter than the other 2.

One of the things for doctors is that they face a severe financial penalty early in their careers. Medical school is demanding and takes 5 years during which time it's very difficult to make any significant income and the debt is accruing fast. The early years as a doctor are low paid and locum work is not as available or well renumerated below registrar level. This means, for example, that if you live in an expensive area like London or the South East, as I do, that you will be late to the property ladder by some 5+ years as compared with other similarly capable (and a great deal of less capable or at least more directionless) school leavers in your cohort. That's not even factoring in all the moving around. You will enter your mid 30s in all likelihood still earning an average-poor salary relative to your qualifications, asset poor, and still paying large sums monthly of student loans. Then it all slows down because it is very difficult to establish yourself as a consultant before you need to be getting on with having a family if you want one. I won't be a consultant or get that salary until I'm about 40. It seems like a delicious salary to me but in the meantime acquaintances who didn't make the same sacrifices relentlessly pursuing one goal from the age of 16/17, who pissed about at uni, who don't do shift work, who haven't dealt with what is at times a crushing weight of responsibility and so forth - but who were able to buy a house just 5 years earlier are enjoying a substantially better lifestyle and will do for many years / perhaps indefinitely. I don't know any doctors, I literally don't know any doctors who haven't at some point been driven to poor mental health by the demands of the career. The majority of doctors I'm close enough with to be aware of such things, have at some point felt suicidal. It's not like other careers. There are times it crushes you.

I don't think the consultant salary in and of itself is poor (though I resent the commonly held notion that consultants are all incredibly wealthy - I don't think I will ever be able to afford private school for my children for example), because it is a vocation and also a wonderful privilege - but that salary has to be taken into the context of the 20 years or so leading up to that point.

Edit: Important disclaimer - nurses in my opinion, do have it much worse.

You and your friends won’t actually know what these consultants’ job plans are- they could be doing research/ private / management roles but fulfilling their NHS obligations that they are paid for.

Consultant 3 - would you expect them to work for free on the 5th day? They will have cover for their patients for emergencies and may cross cover their colleagues when at work.

I think it great young doctors are showing you can work in the NHS and expect to be treated fairly and paid appropriately. They seem to be teaching the older ones about work life balance.

@aveenobambino put it perfectly.

But actually sod all in comparison to many with a much lower level of responsibility, lesser intelligence and shorter training in other walks of life.