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

I fully support you and your peers. What a disgrace to get to the stage of striking though. If someone is educated and skilled in medicine they should be remunerated as such. I work in finance and whilst I have a lot of responsibility…it is never a matter of life and death!!! I am paid towards to top of the scale you posted.

The Australian Medicare system works well. Free healthcare but you are penalised by paying more tax if you don’t have private health insurance. So you use the cover you have and free system when needed.

I hope the Govt. can sort their budget and finances out, along with people and processes that I imagine are the real fault here.

I’d love to get my hands on leading a project to reform the NHS!!!

But you wanted this job. You chose this job.
Couldn't you say the same to very low skilled workers demanding "decent" salaries for work requiring zero qualifications / skills?

What are you whining about, you chose this job, maybe you should have trained to be a doctor?

But medics didn't sign up for working conditions that were unsafe for their patients and themselves. If they were paid according to the responsibilities they bear and value that they add to the NHS, they would stay but the number of vacancies having to be filled due to doctors leaving ( to work overseas where they are valued) is evidence that their current pay (no matter what some on here say) is not enough to keep them working for the NHS. Who's going to treat us then as the countless other professionals being cited here and whose jobs are being compared to doctors didn't want to sign up for the job?

IMO the prison service is similarly underfunded and underpaid. Especially when they have more people leaving than they are recruiting.

Both services are being pushed into privatisation by the back door.

@Meandfour well when I was doing my GCSEs in 2008 the pay was 35% more. And the nhs was functioning just about ok. The conditions we now work in are atrocious. Look at recently released stats of how long people now wait in ED for a bed! I am not working the same job that I signed up for.

Getting a registrar post is now incredibly difficult, progression is harder. We have more elderly and more complex patients than ever before. The NHS is creaking and on the verge of collapse. We’re striking out of sheer desperation as we have no Staff and we must keep those that we do have. We are not martyrs and we deserve to be paid an appropriate amount for our skill level.

So no I didn’t know what I was signing up for and it is incorrect to say that people who are paid 26% less in real terms (so would need a 35% increase to match that pay) are doing the job they signed up for. Preparing for entry to medical school starts at age 15. I’ve devoted half of my life to this career.

@OneMorePiece you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Thank you.

Of course. But when you have people saying well I’ve done a degree for this, I’ve done 6 years for this… that was a choice. A well thought out choice.

They didn't choose this job with its current conditions. They have been backed into this situation. They chose this profession. There is a huge difference. In any other sector if you were treated like they are being treated, you wouldn't stay. You would find another job working for a more reasonable employer and with better pay and terms and conditions. That's what happens with other professionals. They don't have that luxury other than going overseas. All they are asking for is the same real pay as they had in 2008. It was seen to be commensurate with their responsibilities then and they have even more now given how stretched the NHS is. What is so wrong with that?

Personally, I cannot support the Drs strikes, I'm a teacher, and I don't support those either.

Do we deserve higher rates of pay, yes, would we like higher pay, of course - but we went into professions that we knew on entry had none to great a pay at the entry level at least with our eyes open!

We signed up to it!!, we signed contracts to that effect!! and we have a duty, mine is to my pupils to give them the best education I possibly can. Yours, OP as Drs to give the best care you can to your patients.

The effects of the Drs strike is to hand down, quite literally a death sentence to some, and inflict misery and suffering to many more - which somewhat goes against the "first do no harm" thing.

Helping people in need trumps money every time, anything else isn't moral.

We signed up to it!!, we signed contracts to that effect!! and we have a duty,

Presumably then carers on minimum wage should stop complaining and just get on with it then given that they signed contracts? Conveniently ignoring the effect that has on retention and future quality of provision?

Perhaps think of the bigger picture and sit in on a critical thinking class

Yours, OP as Drs to give the best care you can to your patients.

The effects of the Drs strike is to hand down, quite literally a death sentence to some, and inflict misery and suffering to many more - which somewhat goes against the "first do no harm" thing.

Helping people in need trumps money every time, anything else isn't moral.

I think you're completely missing the point. Doctors aren't just striking because of pay. They are striking because of the conditions which they are now subjected to - dangerous conditions that are already causing deaths and putting their patients lives (and their own!) at risk.

Then please direct your anger and dissatisfaction of the current unsafe working conditions that impact patients to those who have the power to make the changes we need to see in schools and hospitals, ie this government. By not making this stand now, many more patients will suffer as doctors and other healthcare staff leave the profession. As a previous poster said, junior doctors cannot work elsewhere in the UK if their working environment becomes unsafe. They are well within their rights to make a stand re their pay and working conditions. I fully support them and other public sector workers (including teachers) whose pay is unrealistic in the current economic climate.

She wouldn’t though. Because she is running a business and not employed.

Obviously it’s different depending on the structure of her business but say she’s LTD. She has to pay herself a wage, pay employer nics as well as her own, pay for her holidays and any illness, business insurances, bank fees, admin hours of running, sourcing cleaning materials, invoicing and growing the business, buying cleaning materials, running a car or transport between jobs, an accountant to do her returns and tax, a website to advertise her services, a company email address, potentially a uniform, or any other branding.

And after all that she may or may not have profit. If she does then she has to pay corp tax then dividend tax.

And has no pension.

To get anywhere near £14 an hour on a package similar to Op she would likely have to work the same number of hours and charge 25-30ph

@OneMorePiece

which somewhat goes against the "first do no harm" thing.

Standing by and not raising awareness of the current state of the NHS - whereby patients are harmed weekly due to unsafe conditions - would also go against this

Funnily enough there hasn't been this level of outrage and cover about it though has there?

No one has to remain in a profession that is destroying them, and your opinion is irrelevant when doctors are leaving in droves anyway.

You can repeat as often as you want that conditions are fine, but if it's not enough to retain doctors then what's your solution?

I agree.

That wasn't me who said that @henlee

Why on earth are we comparing cleaner pay with doctor pay? It has no relevance whatsoever. Anyone can buy a mop and be a cleaner. Doctors study for five or six years before getting to F1. Is it not obvious that the skills requirements are at opposite ends of the spectrum?

Not the point of the thread, but money can't buy "the best, most empathetic individuals" to treat us. It is purely anecdotal, but the way I and my family/friends have been spoken to and treated over the years by hospital doctors and gps is not top dollar attitudes. There's amazing ones don't get me wrong, but money certainly hasn't stopped some being judgemental or treating you as though you're stupid (when I was in agony and bleeding between my period, the male doctor asked me if I am just on my period? Ffs. He was so dismissive and cold. I was having an ectopic pregnancy and didn't know I was pregnant. The lovely nurse came in, and we did a pregnancy test, luckily, or else the doctor was just going to send me home with paracetamol to see if I got better). Money definitely can't buy empathy or the right attitude.

Hi there,
But the this is we didn't sign up for these working conditions and we did not sign up for a massige real term pay cut since 2008. It would take 35% just to restore pay to the 2008 levels.

I don't see why we are valued 35% less than we were in 2008. The demands have only increased, patient complexity has increased, it is an ageing population with patients presenting with multiple medical problems. The working conditions have worsened and we are so stretched.

Wer'e not asking for payrises like MPs have been given but just to be given the same pay as we were in 2008, i.e pay restoration.

Getting the 35% will help stop long hours. We are haemmorhaging doctors abroad, they are leaving in droves. The working conditions and long hours and the extra free long hours means the hourly rate is so low.

As an European country, we have one of the lowest doctor: population ratios in the whole of Europe. We have a national workforce crisis and a massive doctor shortage.Doctors don't feel valued at all by their government and I wanted to post my payslip. The shortage is putting so much pressure on the system and existing doctors. That's why a 35% pay restoration will help working conditions as it will help staff retention and there will be less rota gaps.

Getting the 35% so our pay is restored to 2008 levels will help us pay for our exams, help us with our constant relocations and it's expenditure, help us with career progression. We pay out of pocket for these things with no help from the employer which the real terms paycut has made difficult to do in this day and age.

They're jobs at the end of the day, if you're happy to martyr yourself for the children that's up to you, doesn't mean everyone else should just put up with shitty pay and shitty conditions. It's also very shortsighted.

Sorry to hear about your experiences. However not all doctors are like the one you describe and doctors are within their rights to demand pay restoration. If not 35%, somewhere in between.

We support you 100% OP.

People need to have a good long think about the impact of a shortage of doctors, nurses, paramedics, teachers, care workers etc. Noone will go into these professions in the future. There are far easier jobs that are a lot less essential and that pay a lot more (I'm in one). We'll have plenty of brand consultants but no medical staff.

Well said!

Hi there,
Would like to give another perspective. Think of the school like the NHS so I can explain the current working conditions.

As a teacher, how would you feel if teachers started leaving your school. Initially you would now be covering multiple classes and teach simultaneously. The NHS (i.e school) in this example would force this upon you and you would have no choice to refuse.

At first, you would be forced to teach 2 classes simultaneously. You would feel very tired and stretched. The school would realise, hang on, this person can teach 2 classes simultaneously running in between classrooms. Even more teachers are leaving, let's now make her teach 3 classes simultaneously.

Again this would be forced upon you with no consultation. If you refuse, you are free to leave the school. But you need to pay the bills, have family and need to put food on the table. You stay.

You are now teaching 3 classes simultaneously for every session of the day. You end up staying later and later and leaving regularly at 7 or 8pm for which you get zero reimbursement.

And then your workload increases more and more. You eventually start breaking.

This is what working in the NHS is like. We are covering and working for more doctors than ever. We have to always stay late and are unable to see our families due to the lack of staff cover. We do not get any reimbursement for these extra hours and have to stay for the goodwill of our patients.

But there comes a point where you start breaking. Your soul is crushed. You are hated by your own government who can't look after you and your working conditions despite the blood, swear and tears you put in to serve the public and always do the best you can for your patients.

Your personal life starts suffering, your family starts suffering. You become a machine just designed to work and have no time for any activities/hobbies/family time outside of work.

Your life is sleep, work, sleep, work. Sometimes there is no time to eat. I have come back from long shifts absolutely exhausted at 10 or 11pm after having started at 8am, I just go straight to bed without eating.

I have lost 6kg weight in the last 3 weeks (unintentional weight loss)

We are being broken by the system and the strikes are to raise awareness. The public need to be aware the NHS is currently not fit for purpose and we eventually had to take some sort of stand

Full support to you here @Juniordoc you're doing it for us 💖