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?

No sorry! Wrong quote

It’s disingenuous to suggest doctors are not paid well over the course of their career. You cannot expect to be paid very well initially, considering tax payers pay for much of their training and then lose doctors to the private sector once they have more experience.

I feel really sorry for paramedics who have people's lives in their hands, are even more hampered by the inadequacy of the NHS, have to deal with hostility from the public without support, watch people die they could have saved if they'd arrived earlier, picking up the pieces because the GPs blithely don't see anyone they don't have time to see before dinner at a civilized hour and have made it impossible for the elderly to access them, and paramedics will never be high earners to compensate for any of this.

I think it’s a public sector issue too, where things often do not work well. The system is just broken and poorly setup. In the Trust where I work, pay would not be the first issue for many.

Lateness with rota release and inflexibility of on-calls would be there, but so would failing IT, HR and Payroll systems. The latter can make your working life hell. I suspect if the other stuff went smoothly, then staff would feel more valued and possibly not go on strike.

"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."
Their income is paid for by the taxpayer.

I think if you don't work in a hospital and speak to the junior Dr's you won't understand. For me I wouldn't want that life many other people study yes but not like a doctor though and they have on going exams forever more to stay upto date.

So many doctors are so bogged down they don't have time to have a social life, 2 doctors raising kids absolutely baffles me also. Also 20s are gone by hard studying. Money isn't happiness and personally I would rather cut my cloth and seek happiness from a much lower paid job.

Most people getting 40k are not working 15hour shifts though there's easier ways to earn 40k. But someone has to do the job!

Is it true that there are less than 200 graduate place to study medicine a year?
And is it true that the number of places has been reduced since the Tories have come to power?

There's such a variation in elderly people's willingness to use tech, isn't there? My mother's 85 and happy to use econsult and receive texts and emails with appointments and results in them.

I met someone who was from a monied, professional background who was 70 and still active (met her on a first aid course), who was complaining about not being able to phone up and make an appointment, towards the end of the last lockdown. I suggested that she might use e-consult to contact our GPs (usually works very well: they always ring you back and call you in if necessary). She was OUTRAGED that at HER AGE I would consider such a thing reasonable.

It's really not worth it for the stress and responsibility. Same for nurses and paramedics.

I am not sure pitting NHS professions against each other is helpful. Everybody working together is needed to facilitate decent patient care.

I have no doubt that paramedics are at the frontline of picking up the fallout from an underfunded NHS where the pandemic was the final nail in the coffin.

I think the government despises all NHS workers equally.

as others have said, OP, it’s the conditions you want to focus on, not the pay, as you are clearly wanting to get public support. I am all ears/very receptive re the conditions.

Please don’t take this the wrong way but when doctors talk about money it can sound pretty naive.

The pay is in line with other professions. Our paralegals start on £18500 and go to £20000,£22000 if they progress to training contract then around £28000 if we take them on after qualifying (7 years from A levels) and of course there are two game-changers namely (1) the nhs pension which I can only salivate over and (2) the pyramid structure of law where most women are pushed out and a tiny percent become the equivalent of consultants. re degrading of salary: I started on £12000 in 1995 which is much better than this generation in real terms - most sectors have seen effective paycuts.

tell us more about conditions/start a thread on conditions and you will get a much more positive response.

Wouldn’t the whole NHS work better if it were properly funded? It’s the root of the problem isn’t it.

Paramedics are living with the conditions you mention, but it’s because of underfunding. It’s not because GPs are paid a particular wage or are obstructive to them.

When different elements of the NHS fight and point the finger, you are sabotaging each other. The government would like divide and rule, so the finger isn’t pointed at them.

Keep pointing the finger at government and the underfunding being the root of all the problems.

The doctors you are referring to with the big shiny cars are most likely middle aged, and entered the medical profession at a time when the salary was enough to buy you a nice lifestyle. They certainly didn't graduate with £85k worth of debt.

Doctors entering the profession now on £29k will be living in shitty house shares and not having that much money left at the end of the month when they've paid their rent, bills, student loan, food shopping, travel costs and the cost of any professional exams they need to take. In a few years' time they might have reached the dizzying heights of £40k but they will be nowhere near able to afford to get on the property ladder unless they have family money.

No, you don't go into medicine primarily for the money. But "helping people" doesn't pay the bills. You can't expect the brightest and best young people to commit themselves to years of study and masses of debt only to scrape by financially and only be able to afford a shitty quality of life, on top of being expected to sacrifice their free time and personal relationships for the sake of a job that requires them to work insanely long hours, regularly skip meals and breaks, move to different parts of the country and miss out on important events with their loved ones because they have to work.

You can only ask so much of doctors before they start to say no. 18 year olds will twig that they can earn way more money sitting in an office all day and expensing takeaway sushi to the firm if they have to work past 8pm, and not apply to study medicine at all. Qualified doctors will go and work abroad where they are better paid and better appreciated.

For what it's worth, I'm a lawyer and my starting salary was higher than that 12 years ago, for what was basically glorified work experience. My firm wasn't even in London, where the real money is. First year trainees at some of the top law firms in London are earning more than £50k these days. I'm not saying those trainees are worth that kind of money. I'm saying that potential doctors will choose to do that instead.

The issue is in the word ‘qualified’ - a foundation year medical graduate is no more qualified than any other technical graduate at the beginning of their paid career; full of knowledge, lacking in real world practical experience. And from that POV junior doctors are not paid badly. They should really be viewed as apprentices - not until they complete their F1/F2 would I say that they are really trained as general medics. The training is long but the salary does progress.

i am now at the stage in life where I know several consultants - they are all well paid, with job security. And when I say that I mean their real terms wage drop is similar to many people, especially anyone paid by the public purse. That said, all of my friends have multiple holidays a year, new cars, kids in private schools, big houses. And job security that most of us lack.

Ps thank you for acknowledging the out of hours premia. There are too many threads where people have been called out for trying to hide these - it is bizarre that doctors feel a need to hide all these additional payments.
pps gps get a lot of extra money too - cash in hand from the funeral directors as I understand.

The pay for junior doctors, for the level of responsibility and education they have, (and some staff grades) is especially appalling when you think what politicians get paid, right from Day One, in many cases for no discernible skills or use to society. And that's quite apart from the allowances, second homes, and the way so many state-endorsed liars, sorry, "politicians", employ their family, mates and cronies as their "researchers" and dish out bungs like it was a banana republic.

And don't even get me started on the likes of bankers (feel free to change that first consonant to something more appropriate).

This isn't true. My nan doesn't own a mobile phone in her 70s. I work in this field and you can't assume or base hospital appointments being sent out by text is suitable. It's a disaster, causes multiple errors and people get upset mainly the elderly.

Granted some elderly are trendy and are upto speed but I think that's the minority. I'm 30s and I want a paper letter for my medical appointments.

The op says two years Foundation job, three years core training then three years higher training. That is the absolute minimum - many doctors have a gap between foundation and core and again between core and higher so they can prepare for the next job by working as clinical fellows (still with a 40+ hours week including nights and weekends) The alternative is the possibility of having to move around the country or long commutes as the job applications are based on a points system.
Junior doctors working part time will also have an extra year or two added on.
I know many junior doctors in their late thirties who are still on temporary contacts including a fair few who are juggling childcare with long term job insecurity.
What is wrong is the obscene salaries and packages offered to cityboy (and girl) fresh out of university

The overall package for a doctor starting out is very good and their earning potential is excellent. Funny how they never talk about that but trot out the ‘I earn the same as a McDonald’s worker’ nonsense.

Sorry but doctors aren't even remotely comparable to paralegals!

Here does @PinkVine : fullfact.org/health/cost-training-doctor/

Its a few up years old now, so probably closer to £200,000 / quarter of a million pounds per undergraduate training we taxpayers fund now. This proposal never went ahead, and as we recently saw, Australia wants us to pay for training doctors to then go and work over there (nice opportunity!). All students have to pay loans back too. So long as there is still so many competing for places to study medicine, why should they get paid so much more? There’s a whole load of others happy to take their undergrad place to do the job if people don’t get paid enough. Maybe some should go do management consultancy, sales or accountancy instead if they want paying more. The best doctors I’ve ever come across are clearly motivated by values other than financial

Have RTFT but I’m not with you OP. It’s a job that is extremely unforgiving at the start, and over time affords you a hugely significant salary, opportunities and flexibility. ALL my friends who went to medical school 20 years ago who are consultants do a mixture of prestigious NHS work and very lucrative private work. They all out earn me despite me having initially been better paid. Not many jobs out there which will be so financially rewarding, fulfilling, and prestigious. I think you are incredibly lucky to have that opportunity, and many who applied alongside you did not!

Of course the taxpayer pays a huge amount for the pensions. Doctors may well pay 15% but what's the employer pension contribution rate? Probably around 30% - which comes from the trusts income - ie taxation. The employer rate for my civil service pension is about 27% I think. It's a huge perk and one of the reasons people do choose to work in the public sector.

Not a helpful comment but I have so much respect for doctors (and other healthcare professionals) we’ve had good experiences over the years.

Cash from funeral directors is for cremation forms - as these are private non NHS work.

The remuneration is around £85 before tax and unless you're on a geriatric placement you're unlikely to do more than 1 a month.