To tell you that a newly qualified doctor only earns £29k?

[Drstrike]

Doctors now leave medical school after 5/6 gruelling years of study - with £85k of student debt.

First year post-qualification is £29k, rising to £33k the following year. Then things stagnate around £40k whilst in specialty training.

The first year post-qualification is more supervised. But you are still the first doctor to be bleeped if one of your ward patients starts bleeding post-op, falls and hits their head, has chest pain etc. and you are the one to initiate management then contact your consultant to let them know. You are still covering wards overnight with seniors at a distance. You are still prescribing medications, ordering scans involving radiation, explaining plans to patients and families. You are still a fully qualified doctor - just not with full registration.

This salary is based on a 40-48 hour full time week depending on rota. That means you can be "part time" working 40hrs a week in a job like surgery.

It takes 5/6 years of medical school, 2 years of foundation training, 3 years of core training and 3 years of higher specialty training to become a consultant. That's a commitment of 13 years, generally from the age of 18.

During this time doctors have to pay for their own progression exams (£500-£1000 each).

There are out of hours premia for nights/weekends on top, but in specialties like psychiatry and GP only basic is earnt.

Does this shock you?

What country is paying 400k for a gp 🤔

It isn't to protect jobs. It's because by far the heaviest users of the NHS wouldn't cope with a web/app/email based service.

@RosesAndHellebores All the other professionals mentioned in your post earn a much higher hourly rate than junior doctors and have better working conditions too

My parents are in their 80s and use email and apps, neither of them ever used them at work. The vast majority of elderly people would be able to cope with web/apps/emails if they were given no alternative.

It’s better than a kick up the arse. You’d know that beforehand and if you didn’t like it wouldn’t do it

It’s a decent starting salary for a graduate in a public sector role, better than most in fact. Career progression is also pretty much guaranteed (unlike in other careers).
As clinical roles in the nhs go, I’d argue that F1s actually have much less responsibility than others on a smaller salary (nurses, for instance).
Work/ life balance I agree is a problem in the NHS, with lack of flexibility/ long hours/ missed breaks, but the strikes aren’t about conditions so that’s a separate argument. And OP mentioned some specialities not getting unsociable hours payments: whilst it’s true GPs won’t, it’s also true GPs are not on à junior doctor’s starting salary as it’s not a first role after university. Psychiatrists (and junior doctors on psychiatric rotation) do work unsociable hours and are remunerated for this.

Because the NHS is broken, but enough doctors are being trained and partly because Australia is offering a higher salary and very lifestyle so doctors are happy to get a gold standard education for less here and then take it there.

My grandfather and his brothers were all GPs. They didn't expect to be high earners. Inner city working men, on call every other night with the front room packed with patients every morning. The life of a doctor is hard and stressful. We cannot give doctors the experience they would have in a private healthcare system. And they don't as a rule miss their weddings thankfully. When that happens it's usually down to a mistake made by the junior doctor in the complicated rota system (sometimes there is more than one rota).

The starting salary is £29k but gross pay is 29k + 30 to 40% enhancements for on call and night shifts.
So over £40k.

If only teaching for F1 and F2 doctors was actually taking place at the moment! All senior staff (in fact all medically trained professionals) are so rushed off their feet the level of teaching at present is appallingly low.

And yes junior doctors are now doing less PAID hours but those who are committed to their patients stay well beyond those they should because they don't trust that their most poorly patients will actually have their test results looked at quickly enough and treatment started early enough as they don't want to come in to work the next day to find that a patient, who could have survived with early intervention, has died. That is the level of commitment many of our junior doctors give. Yes some don't give a damn. They should never have got through the selection process in the first place and allocation and selection for university places really needs to be looked at more carefully.

Junior doctors should not be working for approx £14 per hour. It is disgraceful. At present , many are on call for the whole hospital at night and also carry the emergency bleep for CPR at the same time. I, for one, would not want to have that level of responsibility. Thank you to every Junior doctor for who you do!

The people belittling this training and the work undertaken by the junior doctor's to probably haven't much experience of the extent of study needed. If you / your loved ones are seriously ill you may suddenly realise how valuable medical and nursing staff are and you'll really want them to be well trained and have some compassion left. I want drs to be able to give their all at all times and this is unlikely to be the case if they are underappreciated, demoralised and underpaid. Of course they deserve more and if you really saw them at work and have any understanding of their roles and commitment it would be clear. We need to keep the talent here!

‘my brother in law works 2 days a week as a consultant for the nhs - no private work and he earns 100K plus a year‘

Please please tell me how he does this. Look at nhs pay scales. You cannot earn £100k for two days work as a consultant in the NHS. Please give a link.

I am so so relieved my kids didn’t choose Medicine. I would not wish that on any young person now.

We have so many fabulous and enthusiastic 17 y old applicants. Who are then ground down by the system. Junior doctors cannot plan their lives. They are often not told where they are going to be living or whether they can have leave till 4-6 weeks before the date. They cannot plan their own weddings or childcare. It’s disgusting.

Anyway doctors are voting with their feet. Full time dedicated NHS consultants are leaving or reducing sessions. Because they are being saddled with huge tax bills. For pension growth that’s beyond their control. Money that they cannot see or access but there are being taxed for. It’s insane.

From what I can see is that consultants are retiring early or dropping sessions. And juniors are giving up or emigrating to Australia. It’s the most terrifying time for the NHS. And nurses and other allied professions are going through their own nightmares. The general public have no real idea what’s really happening. They should be really scared. Because I am.

.

Seems pretty decent to me

Let's not forget the substantial awards medical professionals can receive, on top of their salary. £40k in some cases.

www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pay/consultant-award-schemes/consultant-award-schemes-and-clinical-excellence-awards-cea

Complete bunkum. The NHS pension has completely changed. It is now based on state pension age so nearly 70!
It's not "paid for by the taxpayer" where does this shit come from. Hospital doctors pay almost 15 % of their income GPs almost 30. They also pay tax. And will be massive net contributors.
Stop talking such rubbish.

I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think the complexity of conditions are greater in the UK compared to other countries. Both Canada and Australia have higher rates of diabetes than the UK, for example, but have much higher physician salaries.

My comment is purely pragmatic. The strata that we’re trying to tap into to recruit talented doctors - bright, conscientious young people - are the same cohort that many other industries (tech, law, finance etc etc) draw on, while offering much higher salaries, flexibility and a better work life balance. We will not have a talented healthcare workforce without offering competitive incentives.

Op, it’s shocking. The other aspect to this is that they are paid less that a NQ Dr would have been paid 10 year ago. We’re heading for a huge wake up call.

I wonder how many of the people on this thread were out on their doorsteps clapping for the NHS during Covid. @Drstrike

I don't fancy a 70 Yr old surgeon or GP personally. But you might. We cannot retain older older doctors nor recruit younger ones. I'm sure we'll be just fine without any

PAs can fill in it's fine!

This is a starting salary though - a lot of newly qualified graduates in different professions also with significant responsibilities are getting paid similar .

Given ‘a session’ in GP is half a day how does ten sessions equate to 3 and a bit days work?!
almost no GPs do ten sessions as it’s crushing the amount of admin associated with a whole session that it takes a day to catch up from 8 sessions and that’s before you factor in all the continuing education and partnership/accountancy/HR etc etc work you have to do.

message from my Gp friend.

you sound very bitter but it’s not ok to make stuff up to further your opinion

Another thing. Go to any gp surgery and look at the cars in the doctors' spaces. I did it. I saw Mercedes, BMWs and shiny big jeeps.

The doctors in my family had an arduous beginning but no worse than the high flying solicitors. It's tough and financially unrewarding. Fast forward twenty years and things are different. They're parking big cars in the reserved spaces outside the surgery.

The pension is a massive thing and makes the basic initial rate of pay a bit of a red herring especially when this can be augmentated highly by doing lucrative overtime that would once have been part of the job.

The far bigger problem is doctors not experiencing professional satisfaction because they're not able to provide safe high quality care to patients.

The issue is working conditions.

People are leaving because their day-to-day experience of working in under funded and under resourced services is hideous. Over time, it becomes untenable. Trying to deliver medical or educational services when there aren’t the resources to do it and aren’t enough staff to do it, is so should destroying, that regardless of pay, people will leave.

The solutions to these things is a mostly funding but also pay. If the government gives the NHS more money and increases pay to attract more workers, the daily experience of staff can change. Then they won’t leave. It’s as simple as that. But the problem is the government don’t want to give the amounts needed to boost the service or pay. And loads of people on this thread don’t want to support those increases either.

So, people will reap the consequences if they’re choices. If you don’t support increases in funding and pay, don’t be surprised when you need the services in future they aren’t there, and yourself or other people experience worse health or shorter life as a result. It is the bottom line.

No not shocking and typical of most graduates. I earned about £22k on a graduate scheme so assume with inflation about the same. My pay is good now and I could earn more contracting if I wanted to. Just as consultants can do private work to earn more/top up.
From your responses you want us to be shocked but trainees know it going in and medicine continues to be oversubscribed in the UK. I imagine although stressful it’s rewarding and you get to deliver good news and treatments alongside bad news.
Medicine has a high potential to earn (too 10% of earners) there will be other university courses where graduates have similar debt but much lower opportunity to earn high salaries in future.

I don’t think the issue is necessarily the pay/debt etc. I’m more concerned about working conditions and hope they’re improving especially for junior doctors.

Presume this reply wasn’t for me?