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

Some probably do if you take into account council tax subsidies, housing benefit, childcare assistance etc. I'm by no means suggesting people on benefits are swimming in money as of course they aren't, but those reliefs along with actual payments probably aren't far off for some. They are getting a 10% rise, as they should, because the gov recognise the effect of inflation etc- yet when it comes to public sector workers miraculously it ceases to be an issue.

Didn't someone say on this thread (or it might have been another one) that they got the same or more in benefits each month as a junior doctor takes home? It's certainly possible, considering housing element and disability benefits.

No @Janiie
You have missed the bit
Read all the OPs post because the OP is one of them.
Clear explanation of what a Junior doctor is.

Doctors are already paid far more over their career than people with a low education.

I think that rising inequality is a bad thing. Do you?

Absolutely@Tarantullah

An increasing divide in inequality is not a good thing
Rewarding people for a job well done is a good thing.
Keeping wages in line with education, additional training, inflation and the need of the country is a good thing.

And so they bloody should be. They hold people’s lives in their hands. There are so many people like me who are only here because of their skill.

It's all the same thing.

So do nurses, paramedics and pharmacists. You seem to think doctors are godlike. They're not. They don't go around holding people's lives in their hands. It is quite literally their job to diagnose and prescribe which is a much more accurate way of looking at it. If only half of them felt like they held lives in their hands!!

Melodrama will not retain them.

Some nurse practitioners are doing GP shifts very successfully so...

Nurses cannot stand in for GPs
They can only assist.
They cannot do the same job.
If you know a surgery that is doing this then report them to the GMC

In terms of education, a doctor has a 5 or 6 year medical degree which is much different to a nurses degree. The knowledge and skillsets are very much different and you need both professions. You cannot expect 2 people with completely different degrees and training to do the exact same job. It would be unfair for a nurse to a doctor's job and a doctor do a nurses job.

Nurse practitioners are very good and they support the service in GP practices. However, their scope of work is limited and there is usually a degree of supervision. For example, nurses cannot operate or perform surgeries in the operating theatre.

It is very wrong to assume all nurses can replace all the doctors. Similarly it would be wrong to assume doctors could replace all the nurses.

They really are doing it - look it up. It's going fine. And they get paid as a GP for those shifts

Most GPs would freely admit they'd be dangerous in a surgical theatre too!

No, nurse practitioners are being used to do GP shifts and paid as if they were GPs. It was in the paper and you can look it up if you're interested.

Hi there, I think it is the wrong platform on here to argue with yourself.

I think you are grossly misinformed.

As I said earlier, the degrees, training and skillsets are entirely different. There is some degree of overlap but they are very much different profession's.

If that was the case, why are 5/6 year medical degrees and all the additional exams and training years still a thing if all professionals could do a shorter nursing degree which would also be cheaper for the government?

In general, it is a very basic concept that different jobs require different degrees and training. A person with a chemistry degree can't be a pilot. A person with a biology degree can't be a mechanical engineer. They just do not possess the knowledge or skills to do the job although they may have some small degree of knowledge here and there.

Similarly, a nurse cannot be a surgeon. A surgeon cannot be an ITU nurse. A pharmacist cannot be a nurse. If this were the case, the whole system would completely collapse

And it can find a £100 million to put a funny hat on a philandering old man. The Tories have probably broken our the country most probably irretrievably.

I think people who choose one of the most difficult careers going should be paid commensurately. They are highly skilled, highly educated professionals who have studied hard making lots of sacrifices at a young age until they qualify as doctors. Then they have to keep studying for their speciality areas of medicine and have to keep undertaking exams while working crazy hours and holding huge life or death responsiblilities all while trying to build some kind of life. They should be paid at a rate that reflects all that. That is what this thread about. There are many other things that are not right in our society but junior doctors should not have to be the scapegoats for that. If anyone thinks junior doctors are on some gravy train, they could always apply to medical school themselves.

I am aware of advanced nurse practitioners.(ANP) and we work alongside them. Yes they can see patients but they work in a limited scope and have a set defined scope of work.

For example, sometimes they are limited in what scans they request, especially if it requires ionising radiation. Sometimes they are limited in what they can prescribe.

They usually have a supervisor who they can discuss things with.

There's a reason ANPs cannot cover wards during a night shift like junior doctors do and it is to do with the knowledge and skillset required to cover a wide plethora of emergencies and having some other practical skills. It is unfair for an ANP to cover such a shift as their training is shorter and they are not equipped to handle some of the emergencies that can arise

It’s not melodramatic to acknowledge that you’ve been given an extra 46 years of life and counting thanks to the skill of a team of doctors. There were no paramedics or pharmacists involved in saving my life and the nurses’ ministrations would have been worthless without those doctors. Surgical teams quite literally hold lives in their hands.

I sympathise with current doctors predicament and believe that a pay rise is warranted. Doctors in the UK aren't paid as much as doctors elsewhere. However the current ask of 35% frankly is outrageous.

Now having said that, graduate doctors complete 2 years of Foundation training (apprenticeship) before becoming Speciality Registrars. Your payslip is from 2021 shows you are an F1 (1st year Doctor) with a salary of £28k. I believe an F2 (2nd year Doctor) earns approx £34k and a Speciality Registrar (3rd year Doctor) earns approx £41k.

Going from £28k to £41k in space of 3yrs isn't too shabby.

^ think these kinds of posts are being missed by some!

Have I missed anything?

@BelleMarionette. One thing you have missed is that the combination of a) paying consultants to fill in for junior doctors; and b) paying the people who have had to come up with this contingency plan amounts to yet another astronomical amount of money wasted in the name of the NHS.

Robert Laurenson does not give the tiniest shit about junior doctors or their patients or the NHS as a whole. He is in this game for his own ends.

It isnt the same job.

They are basically general practice nurses dealing with primary healthcare and whilst they undertake a wide range of jobs
They are not qualified (or insured) to make diagnosis for example

Anyone presenting with potential undiagnosed symptoms will see a gp
Anyone already diagnosed with diabetes, anaemia and so on will on occasions see a general practice nurse for continuing care.

Yes, it will cost a huge amount. It is dwarfed however by the long term bills faced having to scramble to find cover for empty rota slots, due to having lost doctors, mainly to other countries. This is because of poor retention in the NHS. The way to fix this is to improve pay and conditions. It would be cost saving in the long term to pay better, and thereby reducing reliance on locum cover. Given the cost of educating a doctor (around £200k), there is loss when they go abroad soon after graduating.

There is no backing behind this statement. I can assure Robert Laurenson absolutely does care about junior doctors and patients. His campaigning has been effortless and the public will never see the effort that goes on behind closed doors.

He was attending a friend's wedding on pre-booked annual leave which he requested well in advance of any strike dates being released. The dates were unknown at the time. This is the case with other doctors as well. If they happened to have annual leave booked and then later strike dates are announced which by chance happen to fall on their annual leave dates, they are still on annual leave and technically get paid as it's paid leave. Also, doctors were unable to cancel their annual leaves and book it at later time. Many hospital trusts did not allow for this to happen and told doctors you must keep your annual leave dates as we can't accommodate you for booking them later.

Throughout his friend's wedding, Robert Laurenson has been extremely active, attending meetings and going about his usual busy schedule. You will find that his union respect him very dearly more than any other politician.

Steve Barclay is the one who has gone missing and refuses to come to the table despite multiple demands and attempts to bring him to the table over the last couple of months.