My payslip as a doctor in Feb 2021 during COVID

[Juniordoc]

See attached image. Yes this is for full-time work with weekends and nights in the currently stretched working conditions that the NHS provides.

This does not include the expenses and sacrifices of a six year medical degree. On top of that, we have to pay out of pocket for our own GMC membership, medical defence union, postgrad exams and revision courses, conferences and courses.

Please get behind us and support the strikes. We are burnout, exhausted and struggling to live

Well if it's rooted in twisted bitterness, it's just as disgusting. You can decide which applies to you. The truth is that doctors aren't in it for money, although they do need to live. They are certainly clever enough to do something much more financially rewarding. They choose to be doctors to make a difference and to help people when they at their most vulnerable. Is that so difficult for you to understand? Your posts really are disgraceful.

That is a lot. That is mega bucks. Its normal not to get paid a lot when starting out, and research into salaries would have revealed this. All these rotations at different hospitals etc, and uncertainty as whether one would get nights or days didn't start 5 years ago, its been like this for decades at least, so everyone knows what to expect, yet trained in this profession with future earnings in sight. Obviously footballers and hedgefund managers would get paid more, so if it's that sort of salary one wants, then that's the field they need to get into. There were newly qualified solicitors who I know have had to be on benefit supplements whilst training ,and trainee barristers getting paid only £50 a month. They don't know how much they'll earn each month, at the start. That's how most start and then get experience and go onto earn mega bucks, just like doctors do.

I think also the term Junior Doctor implies a lot less responsibility than the reality. The fact that there are people with no qualifications in the NHS earning more than you is a disgrace. I think most of us have encountered a medical emergency along the way and at that point of time we hand ourselves over to the medical staff and our lives are literally in your hands. We should be immensely grateful for these people and they should be rewarded accordingly.

Sorry, that was a response to

**Here are the ‘mega bucks’ consultants pay scales. Talk of £120k earlier, that’s after 19 YEARS as a consultant. Plus university 5 years and junior doctor at least 7 years.
**

I support you 100% OP. Solidarity to you and your colleagues.

Are you aware of how oversubscribed medical school places are? Or how good the pension is? Or how much less British doctors have to pay for their education?

The system is broken. Pay them more and they'll go part time. That's not to say don't pay them more (though the present demand is militant and impossible). But they need a fixed NHS just as the patients do. Not a huge pay raise in a cost of living crisis when their colleagues with similar stresses (paramedics for one) were prepared to ask for something it was possible to give.

There are so many different facets to this. The junior doctors are in large part not 26 but they're being represented by privileged 20 somethings who don't understand how unrealistic they're being. Saying you support them completely will not stop patients dying as a result of their actions, nor will it lead to them being in their posts for longer.

Totally support you - don't listen to all the begrudgers

Yes. Most of you are not on this level of pay. When we talk about junior doctors we are not in the main talking about these doctors. It's misleading to suggest this is the average. It's also misleading not to talk about the pension as that is a crucial part of the wage.

Absolutely disgusting. This is how we pay the people saving our lives?!?!?

Given that pretty much every other country (excl USA) has a part insurance part public funded healthcare service which apparently pays staff better wages and gives faster treatment and better patient outcomes, why do you despise the Tories for trying to improve outer system “by stealth”?

I work in the NHS in a role at the heart of this very dispute and on a daily basis attend meetings planning very expensive cover.
The BMA have been very cunning they wrote to all Consultants last year informing them what they should be paid for extra non contractual work. They called it the BMA rate card. These rates have not been through any pay review body or approved by NHS Employers.

The BMA then balloted the junior doctors who are very valuable members of the work force to take industrial action for pay restoration. The BMA had agreed to all of these historical increases as well as recommended their members accept the maligned 2016 new contract.
Fast forward to this industrial action and the BMA negotiated hard for their rate card to be accepted in the event of junior doctor industrial action all in the name of patient safety.
All Trusts are now paying astronomical rates to the Consultants to cover for the juniors. Our CEO said when agreeing the rates that bankruptcy loomed for some Trusts.
If pay restoration would only cost a billion as said up thread then I am sure this would have cost less in additional pay for non contractual work to Consultants and senior manager man hours in planning for this dispute.
The Government want to see the demise of the NHS I am sure. I don’t think the NHS is underfunded but the spend on governance and scrutiny is astronomical and should be spent instead on patient care.
I feel for you OP and I am on your side but I am not a fan of your union and think they are playing into the govt hands. They should have chosen the Consultants rather than you to fight with.

The pension’s a total irrelevance when you’re 40 years away from it.

I'm not sure why performing CPR is being referenced repeatedly. Paramedics perform CPR, often in the back of an ambulance with no support. CPR is what medics do. Responsibility for human life lies in the hands of many professionals including nurses. If we want to honour that we're not really talking about doctors.

So your current basic, less than 3 years post graduation, is about £42k? A £13k rise in three years?

That seems awfully low!

I don't think 35% is going to happen though unfortunately.

I also think sometimes the pension, annual leave entitlement and supplemental costs tax payers pay in training medical students gets forgotten. When I have training paid for at work I have to sign a contract to say I have stay with that company for x amount of time after otherwise I have to repay the cost. I dont think this is the case for Drs and their taxpayer funded university training costs.

With respect, doing CPR, assisting the dying and running around taking bloods is exactly what I'd expect a doctor to be doing. It riles me when you talk about these tasks as if you're doing us all a massive favour when at the end of the day it's your job to do those things. I also echo pp who say £28k is a fairly average graduate salary which is merely a stepping stone to a lucrative career with excellent job security.

It should be.

I think it’s ok for the first year ‘qualified’, the pay rises fairly rapidly. You all deserve a bit of a rise, but really it’s the working conditions that are the issue, and some of that stems from the underlying toxic god complex within many higher levels of medicine.

Do you have any student loan debts?

Of course they do ! To the tune of approximately £80k.

It most certainly is not. That is utter bollocks. If that's how these militant 20 somethings are thinking they're not fit to sit at the negotiating table. Or let's stop funding the pensions to meet their demands.

Is it showing on the pay-slip I can’t see it?

Yes, move abroad and work for the sort of healthcare system which you’d be aghast at in the UK - one which is part insurance-based, which not only delivers better care for patients, but pays staff well. Oh, the hypocrisy!

Okay, so you just don’t understand industrial action and it’s historial significance, gotcha.

And what is your end game with this? No doctors left? It's bad enough as it is without further draconian measures.