To think medicine isn't a great career choice

[Medicmog]

Growing up, I dreamed of being a doctor. I was bright and motivated, and worked hard at school, and did lots of volunteering, extra curricular activities, and work experience, to gain admission to medical school. It was encouraged by my school and parents, as something worthwhile to aspire to.

I worked hard to complete six years of medical school, while non-medical friends graduated after three or four years and walked into highly paid jobs (generally £40k+). Two or three extra years studying, and I started on little over half this (plus an antisocial hours allowance on some jobs). Fine, I never went into medicine for the money.

What I find difficult is that doctors (and moreover all public sector workers) are so vulnerable due to current politics, public confidence in the progression is at an all time low, bullying in the progression is rife, and it is such an absolutely thankless job, where your employer treats you appallingly.

I have been injured at work, due to my workplaces negligence, and they illegally docked my pay subsequently, despite my continued working. I have been sick, and had consultants say they don't care about occupational health recommendations.

I had a serious illness, and when I emailed work, together with a sick note, I was told that it would be a great inconvenience, and to get back as soon as possible.

I have felt unwell at work and told that I wasn't allowed to sit down.

I have been shouted at and bullied by colleagues.

I have been threatened by patients and relatives.

I have been pressured to do physical work while pregnant that endangered my health.

When I went on maternity leave I didn't get so much as an email wishing me well, let alone a card.

My children have suffered from the long antisocial hours, including the significant amount of unpaid overtime I have done.

I'm at breaking point, and genuinely dreading going back to work after maternity leave. Why would I want to leave my baby, in order to pay more for childcare than I earn, and be treated like shit?

I realise this is a self indulgent post, but in some ways it is cathartic to share. I wouldn't ever recommend someone to join this profession, and I think young people considering it should be given a balanced perspective.

And it’s not always as simple as “going part time” as OP says. I’ve been trying to do that for 2 years but am not allowed to by management despite having 4 young children.

Being a dr used to be a sweet spot of reasonably good renumeration

Totally irrelevant question but I thought renumeration wasn’t a word?

Nearly50 not almost50 🤣

The academic cream of the crop don't all get amazing pay, that's my point! All academics and scientists in STEM subjects also have top grades, a PhD and 'could have gone into the City' (in their heads). They are not all on 100k plus! Salaries are flatlining in academia, science, they may be still good in the City but it has also undergone waves of redundancies and working in those types of environments isn't for everyone at all, ditto top flight law work.

The academic cream of the crop sometimes find it hard to translate their amazing achievement at A level into the type of life they want age 45. This is a perpetual problem. Medicine used to offer a good solution to that- intellectually stimulating, well renumerated and contact with people, feeling of helping others. Now it just seems to suck them up and spit them out.

Yes I suppose one advantage of being a doctor is that you can work outside London.

If you work in finance and even IT you have to work in London on the whole which means £££ for housing and often an unpleasant and expensive commute.

As a doctor you are free to work in Devon or Cornwall or literally anywhere in the world and still earn a good salary.

And try progressing anyway as a woman in finance. Virtually all the fund managers are male.

For me if there is a pay issue it is around the cost of childcare. More flexible childcare such as doctors need is taxed in a crazy way and made very onerous in terms of legal responsibilities. And the pay could be the same over all but better spread out over the career so younger female doctors with children can still afford to work.

remuneration fedp21

I wouldn't recommend my dds (who get the type of grades for med school) go that route, but not because of the pay, but because of the immense stress and poor working conditions and being treated like crap at the end of it.

"we earn much much less than doctors at an equivalent stage and are less likely to make professor than a dr is consultant, but you can't delude yourself that you would have been raking in £400,000 otherwise."

I agree - the comparison is ridiculous.

I genuinely think Doctors are being fed lies by people with an agenda.

anyway, back to the OP, I am genuinely sorry about the awful conditions you describe, and especially the feeling trapped. I hope you can change jobs soon.

OP, you called the BMA when you didn't get a leaving card?

City careers require more than just academic skill. They require being great communicators / presenters and having excellent stakeholder management skills (ie customer service skills) and leadership skill. One of the reasons why medical school grads don’t, on average, go into the city (or don’t do as well when they go) is because they often try to make the move from a point of failure.

Remember, no company wants a loser. And we would be asking a lot of questions as to why a supposedly talented medical school grad chose not to go into medicine.

Good for you Teddy.

Making an informed decision to leave a career that doesn’t suit you is not being a failure or a loser. It’s very rare for people to leave medicine due to actually failing in the sense of poor appraisals or multiple specialty exam resits.

fundamentally BG was responsible for her own safe practice and could/should have walked away if she felt her clinical practice was unsafe

If registrars could just walk off the ward whenever they felt like it, I wouldn’t have miscarried my baby in the ward loo then had to finish my ward round and put a dialysis line in before I could go to the Early Pregnancy Unit. And then come back and finish my on call. No I was certainly not at my best, but there was no SHO (rota gap), so nobody to cover for me until the night reg arrived at 8pm.

I don't know many people other than finance types who walked into £40k. Most of my grad friends and I are on £20-25k after 2 years.

My sister is a doctor and she can get £1k for doing a locus shift, she doesn't work any Mondays and she's on around £45k a year.

You're in the wrong dept.

I also live in London and went to a top 10 uni. Your friends must have been very high flying

That’s simply not true @teddybear45. Extreme example but Plenty of math and IT geeks in the city with very few of the skills you mention. That’s what you need for the quants etc.

I wouldn’t dispute that great communication and leadership skills are important in being successful in the City, but these skills are also central in medicine and most, (by no means all) doctors have them. I think it’s unfair to suggest medics would be failures in the City due to a lack of communication skills.

And both my husband (IT, 2:1 Philosophy UCL) and brother (media strategy, 2:2 Engineering Imperial), have always significantly out-earned me. Far better working conditions, mostly 9-5 (occasional overtime to meet deadlines), no random job rotations to the other end of the country. DH used to tell me to jack in medicine and get a job with him as a junior project manager because I’d earn more with less stress.

Salaried GPs earn £55k on average, new consultants £74k. It’s good money, especially outside of London, but anybody on £150k either does a fuck of a lot of private work, or owns a chain of GP practices and employs other GPs to do actual the work for them - you don’t make that salary through NHS clinical work. It’s like comparing the salary of the man who owns Pimlico Plumbers with the salary of a normal plumber.

Saskin out of interest do you know a lot of women who significantly outearn you as well?

Yep, just chose my family because I know more about their pay, hours and qualifications.

My two best non-medic female friends work in HR in Canary Wharf (forget who for now, she moved recently), and as a mathematical modeller for Shell. Both earn just under six figures, both have kids, both have good degrees but neither Oxbridge. The rest of my female friends are in healthcare so similar salaries to me.

I completely sympathise and agree the system is no longer compatible with being a working parent.

FFS, it never was. Nothing has changed in that regard other than expectations.

Salaried GPs earn £55k on average, new consultants £74k.

I’d like to know if this is what they actually bet out at, or is this baseline and there are significant overtime/unsociable hours top ups on top?

I’m asking out of genuine interest. I’m conscious that drs sometimes don’t have great form in presenting their earnings transparently.

Net out at

My friends are all GP partners though and do earn around 100k or slightly more- you can choose to manage a small practice and get that (I have a close friend who does this), you don't need to manage a mega-chain! Or they locum the days they want and don't do salaried work per se. Both report the emotional drain and awful pressure of admin/too many patients as the worst part of their jobs, though.

The days of people with a 2:2 getting three figure salaries are rarer ( I'm guessing this dates from the times when not many people had degrees). I work in employability at a RG university. There are some great wages out there- but in very specific sectors such as consulting, the city/financial services, actuarial work, some IT depending how high up (I also know lots of everyday IT professionals on 40k). Everyone I know who got into the financial sector has got out again as they didn't like it, only one got out at 40 and retired with enough money.

I guess I work in a sector (academia) where everyone has As and firsts and post-PhD experience and still gets a shit wage and is far less likely to make the equivalent of a GP partner/consultant- and I think some of them are equally deluded they would have made so much more in HR/City etc.

To get those wages in those companies, you have to do a lot of bullshit work, the benefit of my job is that it is intrinsically interesting and feels valuable, once that feeling of being valuable and being able to do your best is gone from medicine, the money in and of itself isn't enough to retain GPs (clearly as they are leaving/shortages).

Changing career from medicine does not make someone a failure, no less than any other individual who wishes to change career. That kind of language is unkind and unhelpful.

Medicine is one of the very few courses to teach communication skills and leadership skills as well.

Also, enough about the money, it's not about that. I have already said that multiple times, as well as backing up my assertions re fellow graduates.

Sashkin sorry to hear that.

I’m asking out of genuine interest. I’m conscious that drs sometimes don’t have great form in presenting their earnings transparently.

On googling, there is a supplement for on call from between 1%-8% of your salary.

To get 8% you have to be on call at least 1:4 days AND be able to return to work immediately when called or provide work at a similar level to day time work (not sure what the latter means exactly but it is not just telephone advice).