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

However, without research scientists creating new drugs (who by the way get shit wages)

Take a look into the future. Tech and AI will be diagnosing you, from your DNA to your imaged insides. Tech will decide your treatment regimen, which drugs in which doses, already there in some areas. Surgical machines could (although it's a scary thought) operate on you remotely.

Am a research scientist and posted this a couple of pages back @KnittedCardi

There is no comparison between being an ECR and an early years doctors

There are many other issues with working as a research scientist, particularly in academic settings, but I know which conditions I'd prefer to be working under.

Junior doctors deserve pay restoration. All these posts trying to imply their jobs are uncesssary (?!) are getting a bit ridiculous. Drug discovery and things like AI based technology are necessary to develop and improve health, but can't replace the role that doctors do.

Fundamentally I think you are misunderstanding how "tech and AI" can be utilised.

I think it’s okay to consider having your life saved a more profound experience than having bought a bag of crisps off someone in Tesco.

I freely admit I’m too thick to ever be a surgeon, couldn’t handle the stress, would never get through the interview. Unlike you I’m not jealous and bitter and would happily see them get paid more than I do for tapping away on my laptop. I’m pleased my taxes fund straight A students to be excellent doctors, if the decent candidates all swan off into law and finance then we’re all screwed. It’s purely selfish, I want the people treating me and my family to be the absolute best and we have to pay them properly to keep them. If you want to be operated on by Kevin with his BTEC then good luck mate

You seem to be ignoring all posters (who literally are medical PhD graduates/research scientists) telling you the opposite.

It is extremely rare for someone to self fund this kind of PhD - beyond anything else the costs for research (e.g., cell/animal models, recruitment of human participants, access to secondary data sources), costs tens of thousands of pounds.

It is usual for someone to be awarded a studentship for their time of study, of which you do not pay tax. I linked you one example which started at 22k rising to 28k.

So to summarise (again) -

Becoming a doctor - 6 years of study of which they are not paid, 28k starting salary
Become a medical researcher - ~3 years of study unpaid, 4 years of study with a salary, starting salary of 36-40k (checked most recent postdoc salaries)

I know this well because when I graduated from my BSc, I was deciding between a medical or research career.

^ an example of a reply you ignored @Mikex

I am aware of the widening of course in a general sense. Some are only accessible if you can demonstrate a black heritage:

@Mikex

Surely you can appreciate that this level of pay cuts is narrowing the demographic of people who apply

Soon medicine will only be a career for the rich - you need family money if you want to pursue a medical career whilst also doing "normal" things like buying a house in your 30s, having kids etc.

No, UK medical degrees are five years minimum, some are six for various reasons (intercalation, Oxbridge, Scottish Med Schools). Graduate Entry Medicine is the only four-year course.

You admit you don't need a PhD for teaching so it has no relevance whatsoever to the entry point for the profession, which is what we were talking about.

Other posters with PhDs have already contradicted your ill-informed assertions about PhDs and pay scales. Why not just accept they know more than you do about this than you do?

Why are you linking to is Open University summer scholarships for computer science? Medical Schools have their own complex widening participation schemes that take account of a wide range of social and educational circumstances. The aim of this is that very clever and motivated DC from a breadth of backgrounds can apply to study medicine. This has no relevance to whether junior doctors should be paid more.

You can't study medicine at the OU.

Again, how do you think people who earn less than doctors buy a house, have kids etc?

The Medical Schools do their best to try to access just as clever DC from non-privileged backgrounds, recognising that diversity enriches the profession and is in the best interests of the patient population. It is ironic that this is wiped out by ridiculously low pay, making it once again mainly accessible to DC whose parents can support financially beyond qualification.

The Telegraph seems to veer between hating and loving Junior Doctors.

Today a long article about the costs of training once qualified
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/junior-doctors-nhs-true-cost/
I screenshot part of it as well in case you can't open the link

I'm not sure why you say "again" as if we've been in a previous conversation or I've made this point before?

Medicine is a long road, at this point you will be in your late 30s before you're indepedently finanically stable. Bright motivated students have choices - and are choosing to go into other career paths where they are paid well earlier on.

Diversity in medical students and practising doctors is important for many reasons.

It's a problem that high achieving students from lower SES backgrounds are choosing to not go into, or stay, in medicine. We're heading back to the old boys club days where rich white men are vastly overpresented in these positions.

Obviously there are people on lower salaries but this is just a massive swerve from an existing problem - conditions in medicine are no longer good enough to attract or retain bright students from varying backgrounds.

Yes - this is what I find so frustrating. All these "contextual offers" and programmes aimed at encouraging uptake are pointless if the career itself isn't sustainable without family wealth.

I mentored an incredibly bright young woman who was a care leaver. She was considering a career in medicine and had got onto one of the (unpaid) university programmes for sixth form students that gurantees a medicine interview. She decided to spend her summer working instead and ultimately chose a degree that would lead into a well paying stable job.

She would've made a fantastic doctor but I've no doubt it was the right choice for her.

Would you mind posting what you earn now so that we can get a better idea of how your wage increases with experience? Thanks!

If you read the thread, the pay scales are referenced. That is not the point. The point the OP is making is that, as a newly qualified doctor during the horrendous Covid crisis, this was her monthly take home pay.

Plenty of people LOST their jobs during Covid. Plenty of self-employed people had no money coming in at all. Plenty of unemployed people were furloughed on a reduced wage. Doctors had a guaranteed wage, regardless. They already get more than most, now they want even more. They're greedy.

Exactly- newly qualified! She won’t be on that now and that’s why she hasn’t posted a current payslip.
Using a 3yo payslip to try and drum up support for their strikes is wrong.

Recent article :
A foundation doctor in their first
year will receive a basic £29,400,
with earnings typically rising to
£37,000 for extra duties. Second-
year doctors earn £43,300. Doctors
then progress to further training
in a chosen area or general practice.
Specialists in one area undertake
two or three years of "core training"
with basic pay of £40,000, rising to
£51,000 with experience, and
estimated earnings of around
£56,000, Specialty registrars receive
£62,600. As their career progresses,
doctors can enjoy far higher salaries
with consultants earning £125,000
and GP partners making even more.

Yes and the effects of the pandemic were not their fault. They were risking their lives every day to try to limit the devastation of it, remember?

Envy seems to be clouding reason here. Just because doctors earn 'more than most'. Can you not comprehend the gap in skillset between doctors and the 'most'? It is huge compared to most other jobs. Careers where you need to have very high intellect, very high levels of education and very high commitment levels tend to pay a whole lot more than doctors get and that's before you even factor in the huge consideration that doctors have the responsibility of life or death on their watch. I actually believe they should be paid a lot more, even at the top end of the scale. Look at tech, consultancy, pharma, city law firms - £120k is really not that much at all. I think you are probably just comparing their salaries with the wrong jobs.

£120,000 is a lot of money to most people.

The problem is that society is becoming more and more unequal and doctors want to keep up with the Jones's and join in on the inequality. Which would make society even more unequal. Workers would have to pay more taxes and NI to go to doctors to get even richer. The rich would get even richer and the poor even poorer.

It is a lot yes, but its not even close to wages of doctors in many comparable countries abroad. I suspect doctors aren't against others having their wages raised are they?

@Juniordoc - I would love you to share , if you can, what your typical day can look like. A break down would be very interesting (including the breaks you have, how much admin you have to do etc). I know there is no one day which is the same, but I'd love to know. I have a feeling my DD (she's only 12) but she has expressed some kind of interest in working in the medical field 'helping people' if the art thing doesn't work out...Needless to say, I won't be encouraging it (sounds bad, I know). It would be great to share what exactly your day was like yesterday, for example, if you worked yesterday. TIA.

Well ya would be wrong, it would be different if he was on the job training and didn't require a medical degree to begin with. In my industry folk walk into graduate jobs on £40k+ as well as benefits etc and it's not a life or death industry. After all that uni etc it's not unreasonable to be warning a good wage,what about those that are paying for uni etc bloody ridiculous!!!

If others had their wages raised, doctors would want even more to differentiate because they are so highly skilled and study so hard to get where they are.

Well at least you are now acknowledging that they are so highly skilled and study hard to get where they are. I think you are looking at this in an unnecessarily adversarial way. It's not about pitching groups against each other. It is simply that doctors want to be paid the same as they were in 2008 in real terms and that is not an unreasonable ask.

@Juniordoc firstly, thank you for all your hard work and effort in trying to keep everyone safe and well - I think a lot of us can agree that we genuinely appreciate your dedication to the profession, particularly during Covid as this was a very challenging time for everyone.

To be completely honest, I am 50/50 on the strikes and I do feel a 35% increase is excessive, however, I do appreciate you are genuinely out here saving lives so hope that you there can be a compromise or solution to the debates and strikes on current pay for junior doctors.

You've shown us your payslip from 2021 but how does your pay look as of today? Surely you must have received some type of increase now that we are a whole two years on?