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?

Comparison is the thief of joy. 😂
Did you not know the starting salary when you decided to become a doctor?

Did you go into medicine for the money?

Junior doctors are learning the job for the first few years. Medical school gives you the license to do the work. So 29k plus benefits for a trainee is more than adequate to start on I believe.

I think it's career earnings that are the most relevant thing here surely?

Terms and conditions I personally feel are a bigger issue for retention of doctors.

An experience bin man, is going to spend their entire life on a salary less than a junior doctor. Also the junior doctors starting salary is still unachievable to that worker no matter how hard they work or hours they put in.

Both are roles essential to all of us but one will only every get better and see an astronomical increase in living standards, pay and pension. Also the JR doctor who puts them self on a god like pedestal and looks down on the binman needs to get a grip.

What should they earn first year out of university including all shift allowances? Is it a more equal increase or should the top of consultants pay also be more? Does a nurse consultant or consultant psychologist deserve to earn the same as a medical consultant? How much more tax are you prepared to pay over £50,000 to fund the higher pay? I can see an argument to have a more linear increase, because it is a big jump at consultant, but junior doctors in comparison to other clinical nhs staff are paid more, which reflects the extra training they have undertaken, however there is more crossover of roles now than before.

As much as I do sympathise, I’m getting bored of the endless won’t-someone-think-of-the-poor-doctors (or teachers) threads. Yours isn’t the only profession that is overworked and underpaid with high responsibly levels. You’re only on that “low” salary (which is well above the national average) for a few years.

What do you do now?
I am worried by the lack of medics generally

If one of my children wanted to study medicine and become a doctor I would advise them to think very carefully about the pay. They would be working for the public sector and may not succeed in reaching consultant level where they could do additional private work.
I do not think doctors salaries reflect the study and responsibilities they have. However, working for the public sector is clear - there will always be salary limitations and controls. They must want to do medicine enough for work satisfaction and understand that school/uni friends who go into other areas of life may out earn them.
That saying, some medic consultants do extremely well financially with private work.

I don't think it's at all a given that one is going to see an astronomical increase in living standards. Earning a very mediocre salary until you're past the age at which you'll want to be having kids if you want them, whilst making huge personal sacrifices, not having a normal social life and studying for compulsory and expensive exams which you have to pay for yourself is not what I would call a high standard of living. I know doctors in their 30s who are still renting, and having 49% of the top slice of their salary deducted at source once student loan repayments are factored in. And they're the lucky ones who started uni before the fees went up to £9k a year, so never had £85k worth of debt.

If you want high quality doctors who aren't going to quit, emigrate or burn out, they need a better deal.

But this thread shows that you get the NHS you're willing to pay for.

Yes, lots of people are over worked and underpaid.

I suppose the question is whether people are flooding out of those other occupations in similar numbers and if we think the consequences of that are similar for society.

Public services are just that aren’t they…vital to us all. We would literally be in the shit if the binmen all quit because their conditions and pay weren’t tolerable. We will have serious problems if teachers and nurses continue to leave at the rates they have been. So can the issues surrounding these professions be left because others are also underpaid?

A very sick relative has just spent 13 hours in A& E after being called in due to something worrying found on a scan.
My DF spent the night outside A&E in an ambulance last year. He required life saving surgery.
Would increasing doctors' pay change this? I don't think so.
I have two friends though who have very well paid NHS admin roles, one earns 3.5 times the basic doctor's salary and works part time.
Personally I would suggest that the money would be better directed to the front line than support roles and that it's not just a case of paying doctors more, the NHS needs a huge overhaul.

Yep, we will get the NHS and other public services we are willing to pay for.

People aren’t willing to pay taxes to fund pay and particularly to fund the services themselves….so that is the service we will receive. But funnily enough, so many people won’t spot the link between their thoughts on this thread and the public services they have available to them in 10 years time.

It is shocking and definitely not enough, particularly if they need to be in London

This is more about pay restoration. Doctors and nurses salaries have dropped more relative to inflation than any other profession/job. So they have taken progressive pay cuts over the last 10/20 years. If that's how we treat people bearing such training and experience I truly despair of society and will sadly sow what you reap.
This denigration and dumbing down of expertise is utterly terrifying (and idiotic)

Actually I know exactly what is is like, the amount of deductions I pay each month from tax and student loans is more than a lot of people earn each month. The difference is I actually care about the people at the bottom on low pay and menial jobs. Seeing a jnr doctor come on MN moaning about 29K starting salary and demeaning those at the bottom needs to fuck right off.

They never mentioned working standards or standards of patient care all they moaned about was there merge 29K starting salary (before all the addons) pathetic.

Cry me a river.

For the idiots comparing binmen with doctors, why not think about how it might play out if they were going to swap jobs for the day. Maybe that will help you get your thick heads round the relative levels of skillsets.

NHS consultant here. Gross 68k for theoretically 4 days/week. I’m well aware it’s better than large swathes of the country.

It’s a lot of responsibility and far more than can be fitted into the hours. I’m regularly in until 9pm at least one day/week and login and do a couple of hours on the weekend to prepare my clinic so I can see more patients efficiently or to sort extra teaching/stuff to actually improve the department.

I’m responsible for everything done in my name - decisions made by nurses/pharmacists/physician associates, junior doctors. I’m also not really covered whilst on holiday.

I think as a precious poster says - the workload is so massive and the repercussions for mistakes so huge. And providing sub optimal care is draining and upsetting.

I’m head of a small service plus 2 disease areas. And more and more things are landing on my plate.

But yes I did know there would be responsibility and long hours and don’t expect as a professional to be able to perfectly work 9-5. I have a bit more flexibility now than when I was a junior.

I think part of it is the real terms pay erosion. You know the work is going to be long but you’d hope you could easily afford some of the things that make life easier. Some childcare/domestic help to be able to actually give work the dedication it needs. The usual MN “you’re a doctor - throw money at it” is increasingly unaffordable.

Not woe is me, I’m relatively well paid, but I’m surprised that as a consultant it’s a more of a struggle than I’d thought to afford a family home in the area I’d like and the childcare.

Doctors in other countries do earn comparatively more generally.

But if we weren’t running on permanently not enough staff and trying to look after far more patients than we have capacity for and I wasn’t working hour and hours and hours more than I’m paid for I’d probably be happier with the salary!

I am a doctor. I qualified abroad in the 90s. But did all my junior doctor and GP training in the UK. I have been a NHS GP for over 20 years. I love being a dr but the job is utterly intolerable. I have guided both my bright driven children in different directions and they have seen how broken the NHS has made me. Not a chance in hell I am sacrificing my children on the alter of the NHS and the despicable public opinion clear on this thread.

I agree with this.

When I started teaching in 2000, I could comfortably afford a mortgage on a 2 bed house, my bills, started savings, plus I had a life - gym and travel! I don’t think the average NQT could afford that now.

I’ve now been teaching 23 years - not one student wants to pursue education as a career. I married into a family of teachers. My husband is a teacher and his siblings and cousins are teachers. We are all mid/late 40s and have children. We will actively discourage our children to go into education.

Personally, I think it’s absolutely shit. The average Joe who’s never worked in any emergency or medical service wouldn’t understand. The sheer amount of responsibility and hours you have to work for £29k is pathetic. Never mind the sheer amount of expertise and knowledge you have to apply every day.

I work in the emergency services and I have started on £23.5k and wondering what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.

Yes Id love to see the JNR doctors lower themselves to haul all that shit, doing back breaking work through snow/sleet/.rain/hail/burning sun all day. how very offensive.

I never wanted to be rich, not ever saw teaching to make me millions, but for my
education level and, regardless what the media portray, I continually pursue training, I just want to be comfortable.

I’ve got all the way to page 9 and not one person has stated how much doctors get paid in other countries. It’s (a lot) more than in the U.K. due to the working conditions in the NHS many doctors are choosing to move abroad
to work. As any business knows if you don’t pay competitive salaries you loose your (best) staff. This is what is happening in the U.K. The NHS doctors will likely nearly all be migrants within the next 10-20 years from countries where doctors earn less than in the U.K. Thats how it works when you are a skilled professional. The world is (give or take having to sit new exams ) your oyster

Your chip is so massive. No one is denigrating any other profession but you are massively denigrating and dumbing down doctors.
I am sure you'll be the first to volunteer the binman to do your heart surgery/neiro surgery, manage your chemotherapy, your child's sepsis? Yes ? Your comments are frankly ridiculous and offensive.

It is possible to care about both. I believe people should be able to live off of their wages and that highly qualified professionals with a lot of responsibility should be fairly paid.

You are the one who is offensive and trying to turn things around. The point is that our cleverest people study for years and years to be doctors and this is very obviously just not the case with binmen. I have nothing against binmen but you cannot compare salaries. You haven't addressed my question about relative skillsets or maybe you just can't understand it. And by the way doctors deal with quite a bit of shit too.