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

My consultant charges £200 for a 10minure consultation. Even after expenses, he's not poor.
The consultants car park at the private hospital i go to tells you all you need to know to answer OPs question.

@MyAmusedOpalCrabso at the top of their career a consultant or GP may earn around £120K FTE. You think this is a good wage in 2025 given their workload and the level of responsibility they carry? Not all specialities are able to have a good private practice.
Also there are pay rates between GPs depending on if you are a partner or not. Employef GPs pay has not gone up for a number of years and partners pay has actually gone down due to the rise in cost of utilities and staff wages.

Not to mention the basics of supply and demand when you think what they have to be capable of to join the profession in the first place.

I work in a hospital and the other day witnessed a doctor loudly complaining that we had run out of milk and she had to go and buy it for the coffee.. and in the same breath start discussing the well known private school she was sending her 4yo to in September.

YANBU

I do think that many doctors come from already privileged backgrounds so for a lot of them their standard of poorly paid is a lot different to others (not all of them and the ones that are can’t help it I guess but I still agree with you)

I'm a teacher. I suspect that, like with my profession, this apparent 'perk' is something that's widely misunderstood.

I'm hope that a bit of comfort in the later part of their careers compensates a little for the piss-take hours they do at the start of them.

Can you show us these posts and news articles so we can see what you mean, because I haven’t read anywhere that doctors are struggling and are underpaid. But surely anyone with a brain will understand the article is about junior doctors. You have to be pretty thick think band 8/9 are being underpaid.

And are regularly under the stress
of redundancy rounds.

The difference is that successful accountants, solicitors, actuaries, bankers, barristers, etc, have to be polite to their clients, have polite staff and turn up on time, without exception, for meetings.

I have seen many Dr's whose bills I wouldn’t had paid if I'd seen them privately, because they were rude, arrogant and dismissive.

There's the difference.

Because the private sector generates income for business owners/shareholders, and salaries reflect the potential for income generation by the staff member. The more profit the higher the salary assuming doctors can negotiate with their private employer.

The public sector is literally tax payers money, any additional salary is raised through higher taxes and there’s a limit people are willing and able to pay. Better leave and pension arrangements are usually the pay off for poorer up front salaries.

Their pension conditions were reduced many years ago in line with other public sector workers.

The term is Resident doctor now actually, to avoid the confusion around what junior means.
Im a “junior” doctor. I’m 38, I’ve been a fully qualified doctor for 15 years. At night I have the on the ground responsibility for around 150-200 patients so I don’t think there’s much junior about me! Pay is all relative, I’m certainly paid less than some friends from Uni who didn’t study medicine and I certainly have more responsibility but that’s part of the job. However I’m at the top of the resident pay scale, the F1s starting out are definitely underpaid with huge debt to contend with. There’s no way I’d encourage my children to pursue medicine now.

Consultants are worth every penny.
But tell me, if GPs are paid so badly, how come every single one at my local practice can afford to work part time…

GP’s are self employed/not employed by the NHS.

so their salaries are outside that remit. They set their own salaries or the GP surgery that employs them does.

however they still retain the nhs pension and other benefits.

so I don’t think you can include them

It's completely ridiculous to say they should get as much as working abroad or in the private sector. If they want to work in the private sector they can get the private sector to fund their training. Funnily enough won't necessarily be able to develop their lucrative specialisms working privately. A lot more patients go through the NHS than privately. The private sector creams off the profitable work leaving the NHS to deal with all the difficult cases.

Lots of us Could earn more abroad. I could move to UAE, dh could get way more if he worked in America. There are often downsides to moving for work. Not all of us want to be globally mobile all for the sake of a job.

I happen to agree consultant's are worth their 6 figure salaries and think doctors should be well paid but its arrogant to demand equivalence with ftse 250 CEO just because you might have been capable of similar elevated salaries if only you'd tried for a totally different career.

@MyAmusedOpalCrab you are falling into the trap of seeing a six figure sum and assuming it means they’re rich.

£100k less tax, student loan and NHS pension will be about £4.5k a month.

£4.5k a month round here would cover one nursery fee and a ~£450k mortgage.

It’s not anywhere near as good as the headline figure suggests.

Because public sector jobs have vast pensions and excellent job security. Since when did you hear of hospital consultants being made redundant? This will only happen if they keep up with unaffordable pay demands.

Who is staying all doctors are struggling financially? Is this hearsay or you have evidence? Literally no one is saying that 😂

No, nobody does.
Qualified doctors earn well and everybody knows that.

It includes everyone that is not at Consultant level and the new term is Resident Doctor after the strike. As the term Junior seemed to imply that they were not actually doctors. Some even thought they were students.

To become a consultant in for example anaesthetics, you do minimum 5 years at medical school, 2 years foundation training, 3 years core training, 4 years registrar training. You generally move hospitals yearly from f1 until your final year of training, where the absolutely earliest you can be is 32. I’ve never heard of anyone finish then because it’s a struggle at each level to get a job at the next stage. Surgeons and other specialties do PhDs too (another 3-4 years), because you need them to get the consultants posts as they’re so competitive. Do the maths here as to how much that affects your life, emotionally and financially. You pay for all your exams, unlike other professions. Again for anaesthetics, this is over £2.5k (if you pass all of them first time, which in anaesthetics is 30-40% of candidates). You then pay your indemnity, your registration fee, your royal college fee (all mandatory) and generally you pay to be a member of a union too (not mandatory but very important). As a core trainee this is over £100 per month in mandatory fees. To be just registered with the GMC 5 years post qualification is £500 a year. It’s much much more for consultants. We get relocation expenses that are capped and we are then taxed on. So aren’t much use

when you have done this amount of training (unlike the prime minister), people expect a salary reflective of their level of skill. And for the current cost of living and the level of responsibility taken on per shift, no the salary is not currently adequate. I don’t expect anyone who hasn’t done that training to understand. What everyone does need to understand is we are losing consultants in droves to other countries where they are paid much much better. If you don’t increase the salaries and keep up, you will lose good doctors and have inadequate numbers to keep UK hospitals safe.

Let's not even pretend that consultants don't earn plenty. Their nhs salary is just the baseline alongside private clinics, teaching, medical trials etc etc. Its the nurses and care workers that are grossly underpaid. Im not a nurse btw!