to think that medical students should be funded differently than students on other courses?

[ChunkysMum]

Their course is 5-6 years long so accumulated debt is higher.

Their long hours and reduced length of Summer holidays (2-4 weeks) makes supporting themselves through extra-curricular employment difficult.

There starting wage when they qualify is actually alot lower than many other graduates (five-six years after starting their degree).

They often have to commute to different hospitals.

Atm they get a bursary to cover tuition fees in the final year only, but for a low income student, the way that this works out with a reduced student loan they end up with £1000 less to spend on food etc in the final year.

If it wasn't for the very high salaries that doctors earn I would have agreed with you.

Does nursing qualify as a medical student? In that respect YABU as my housemate is doing it - and it's funded entirely by the NHS in terms of course fees.

I don't think she deserves special treatment re: living costs. She could work as a bank HCA if she wanted a job, who will allow flexibility in terms of placements, and her starting salary will be more than I am on (been working 6 years).

I know nothing about doctoring or any other medical discipline to comment.

I had to pay £9,000 tuition fees, plus a student loan for accomodation plus I had a job on my course btw.

YABU they more than make up for it within a couple of years of qualifying.

Agree with Cloutie - salaries for doctors are obscene, they can afford to repay whatever debt they carry through their course.

I am referring to medical students Buttwart, so those training to be doctors, rather than nursing students.

I have friends who are nursing students and they do seem to get alot of money from the NHS compared to medical students.

The salaries of doctors are not as high as everyone seems to think compared to other industries, the hours that they work and the fact that they have to pay very high amounts to sit mandatory exams throughout their training.

YANBU. Added to that, medicine is one of the hardest courses to get into. (along with my profession dentistry of course!). If you want to attract the brightest, most capable students into medicine, instead of, for instance, engineering, then you have to make it possible for students who are not from wealthy families to do. I don't particularly want to be treated by second rate doctors because they struggled to understand chemistry, while the cleverer ones go off and do other careers because medicine is too expensive to be feasible.

You say "there (sic) starting wage when they qualify is actually alot lower than many other graduates).

EH? What absolute nonsense. Medical students earn astronomical wages once they become doctors.
In fact, of my group of friends who graduated some 10 years ago, only the former medics - who are now doctors and earning double what the rest of us do - are the ones who've been able to afford to buy their own houses, have fancy weddings and go on foreign holidays.
I'm not saying they don't deserve high wages, it's a tough job with long hours. But they shouldn't be given special treatment at university when they're going into a career with guaranteed employment and great pay.

And what about the other long courses, such as architecture, law, and everything else that takes 6/7 years to qualify? YABU.

Medical students are only given a small amount of NHS funding in their 5th year. Dentists are funded for most of their studies and earn more than many doctors and most of them don't work for the NHS either. That I find unfair.

Do NHS doctors have to pay their own insurances?

As I understand it, it costs dentist a lot in insurances to be able to practice, which does eat into their admittedly astronomical earnings. (BIL dentist).

If it wasn't for the very high salaries that doctors earn I would have agreed with you

Bingo.

And BIL gets LOADS of time off and only works 4 days a week, normal hours.

I wish I was a dentist. I wish I hadn't been a bit of a hippy at 17 when I decide to follow my "art". Sigh. I was clever enough too. bitter

YANBU. For all the reasons you gave and more. Med students don't start earning until their courses are finished, and by then they are of an age where they probably want to start thinking about a mortgage.

We need good doctors, they benefit everyone, antehran the moment, people are put off a career in medicine because of the ridiculously high fees. Their wages aren't that great, not until they get much higher up the career ladder, and when they do get to being high paid, they are only being paid what they are worth. They have a huge amount of responsibility in very demanding jobs, work very long hours, and they deserve to be paid well. Not forgetting that by the time they do earn well, they start paying higher rate tax as well, so they would pay back what it woud cost to get them to that level.

Doctors have to pay their own insurance usually though some GPs can get theirs as part of the salary package. But if they work privately they would have to pay.

"Very high salaries"

Really??? Do you know what a junior doctor earns? £22,412 basic wage.

www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/details/Default.aspx?Id=553

Hardly obscene for the level of education and responsibility!

YABU - they put in the hard yards to start (like most professionals) and they reap the benefits later. I don't see why they should be treated as some kind of special case.

After 5 years study, junior doctors earn I think around £18000. I know engineering graduates who start on 35 or 40k. After that, pay rises incrementally but often on completion of difficult training and exams alongside work. The hours are long and unpredictable. I know a lot of doctors from uni and they were just commenting recently on how they thought they had done quite well in life til comparing themselves to those who hadn't gone into the traditional professions, and who had more expensive houses, luxury cars, etc..

Dentistry is only funded if you do 3 years in the NHS after qualifying.

The thing is though that very, very few students manage financially throughout each year without money from parents and/or employment. Medical students just can't work part-time; the nature of the course doesn't allow it. That means they have to rely on their parents giving them money.

If your parents were unemployed or on a low wage or just didn't want to contribute, you would be really, really broke, to the extent you would find it very hard to find money to eat.

And they pay their own GMC fees (£400), indemnity (NHS indemnity doesn't cover everything), and all postgraduate exams and courses ( at least £3000+).

Currently the basic staring salary for a junior doctor is £22,412 (this may be increased if the job is 'banded' meaning has very unsociable hours). This is less than many graduates.

Clinical medical students spend all day (7.30-8am start until around 5pm) plus some oncalls etc in the hospital and then have a hell of a lot of information to learn outside of these hours. This makes it difficult to hold down an additional job.

In Nottingham medical school they have 2 weeks summer between 3rd and 4th year and 4 weeks between 4th and 5th year. This makes getting a summer job difficult.

Often medical students will be expected to commute long distances without any travel expenses (aprt form final year). Nursing students get mileage. They also may be expected to pay for parking when they get there.

I know people applying this year and it doesn't seem to have put anyone off doing medicine.

I think because medicine is a vocational course really (I know it's very academic and hard to get a place, but it's not a pure subject iyswim) you only do it if you really want to, and the fees don't really alter that.

The people I know doing medicine wouldn't have thanked you for suggesting they do engineering.

But other courses do get much more funding from the NHS. I think perhaps it should be re-jigged so travel costs are properly re-imbursed and the exam costs could be lowered.

Sorry, x-post

By the time they are reaping the benefits they are paying higher rate tax! They pay back in to the system!

Thanks Bartlett, 22.5k, I am a few years out of date!

In many ways, we don't know what will happen if students are deterred from lengthy, difficult courses like medicine, as its only very recently that students have had to pay their own fees. And of course, in the not so dim and distant past, students got grants. And we all know that this is because of the massive expansion of university education to students who in the past, were not university material. It hasn't really been thought through the effect that this will have on professions such as medicine, where long, expensive training is required and there is competition for the brightest students.

I really don't want to be treated by doctors who only got in because they had rich enough families to pay their way through the course, not because they are the brightest and best!

Starting salary for a midwife or nurse: £21,176

www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/details/Default.aspx?Id=4