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?

Where have i denigrating and dumbing down doctors please quote me? your talking bollocks.

What i do have an issue is the OP coming on here complaining as a JNR doctor they only get a basic of £29K more than a lot of people will ever earn in their life. whilst at the same time look down on more menial workers. The OP never mentioned working conditions or better treatment for patients just money, greedy money grabbing.

As for the chip on my shoulder as i have already stated I earn a very good income and Im grateful. but that does not mean ill stand by whilst some ungrateful money grabbing jnr doc complains their starting pay is that of a lowly menial worker.

Not a doctor but my husband is a teacher. When he was a student (and a student teacher), he worked for Bank’s Brewery. Got up at 4am each morning to load the trucks. I worked in the service industry before teaching. We appreciate all worker’s worth. As a society we have decided we pay more (ha!) for pursing a specialism. The more narrow the specialism, the more it is worth according to the society we live in.

I'm really shocked at the majority of posts on this thread. We are desperately short of doctors. £29k is nothing after five years of training, being responsible for life and death, working long shifts at all times of day and night. So at a point where we lost many medics to Brexit, fewer people will train as doctors, and te NHS will be in an even worse state in a few years, than it is now.

All these people sneering are astonishingly naive if they think this isn't going to end badly. It's no use getting a high salary as a consultant (a minimum of eight years after completing medical training) if you're unable to have a proper home, to have a family etc in the meantime, because you're earning so relatively little while paying back £85k. I can't think of another job on average wage where there's an £85k debt involved.

Your last paragraph is the issue.

A junior doctor‘s starting pay can not be compared to a a job where no education is needed. 29k is awful when I think I started teaching in 2000 on 15k.

i totally agree that doctors are unpaid, especially junior doctors. Everyone goes on about the nurses but not a word about just how shit the pay is for junior doctors. Long hours, constant pressure and the sadness that you can’t help everyone is very draining.

But the binman has worked for those years when the doctor was a student. And the doctor will go on to earn far more. So it's fine.

And I know a doctor’s salary will put pace mine. I’ve been on UP3 for 12 years and my salary will only increase with government policy. I still see them are worth more to society than I am.

...and by the way:

The average starting salary of a bin worker in the UK is £17,000. This increases to an average of £25,213 for experienced bin workers. However, bin men in London have a higher average salary of £31,816.

So a bin man in London earns more than the starting salary of a junior doctor after 5-6 years of training and a huge amount more responsibility.

My brother has a menial but absolutely vital to society, job. I don't remotely look down on him, but while his job is vital, he'll be the first to say that it doesn't begin to carry the responsibility for life that a doctor has. Nor does he have to pay back a huge loan.

A junior doctor‘s starting pay can not be compared to a a job where no education is needed.

Oh right so a manual laborer who works 45+ hour weeks in all weathers in back breaking work for all their life. lets call them Joe who has worked his entire ass off in a relentless thank less job, to feed his family for the past 35 years., living on the breadline. should have less value and never be rewarded with a salary any where near that of a newly qualified jnr doctor at the bottom of the ladder.

🙄

i doubt you would find a 22 year old doctor,

Doctors are well-paid compared to many other people who pay taxes that pay the doctors salaries. Doctors are just being greedy to ask for more. That money would have to come from somewhere.

I did NOT say that. I said as a society financial worth has been decided by specialisms.

Take it up with the government, I don’t decide who is worth and why.

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

Well that's not strictly true, is it?

It ignores a bonus (up to 15%) for on call work.

And another bonus for difficult to fill specialities.

Plus extended, funded training.

That £40k you mention? Stagnates there for precisely two years, then goes up to £51k for a further three years, before 'stagnating' at £58k. Plus the on call bonus, of course.

By that time you'd be looking for consultant posts, on six figures plus private.

So, whilst there are huge issues with working conditions for doctors, I have very limited sympathy regarding pay.

(Source: www.nhsemployers.org/system/files/2022-08/Pay-and-Conditions-Circular-MD-3-2022.pdf)

@saraclara When people try to add London Weighting to an argument, (6% of England not even the UK) you are creating a straw-man argument. 🙄

I was 23 when I qualified.

Someone's worth is not dictated by their salary. No a refuse collector shouldn't be paid more than a doctor wtf.

Where does this private nonsense come from. Small % of NHS consultants do significant private work. Some specialities none. Mostly ortho and derm. Most don't want to/don't have the time. And if they do its in their own bloody time.

When the Doctors and Teachers say they would actively discourage their children from going into these careers, you know something has gone very wrong.

The Consultant on the previous page of the thread was said he is paid £68k was right when he said the conditions have worsened and responsibility placed upon him has grown, and despite the salary being decent, it’s fallen in real terms and is simply another feature of the profession that makes people leave.

Yes, people are still queuing up to do medicine. But for how long? People stopped queuing up for teaching a long time ago and shortages are extreme now.

Yes. The public sector has good pensions and generally has secure employment which lots of jobs don’t have. But even with those things, people are leaving because the conditions are intolerable. Yes, lots of jobs are overworked and underpaid, but the volume of work, the pace required and particularly the level of responsibility and consequences and burden when things go wrong (and when they are underfunded, things do go wrong) make it intolerable rather than simply hard. When it feels like you just can’t succeed and do your job, even when you work incredibly hard, it’s soul destroying. And that’s why people leave - because the system is broken and won’t allow them to do the job they’ve trained for and essentially love.

What a waste if it costs £200k to train a doctor….to then not hold onto them, but to let them go abroad. It’s for a better life primarily, with the money being an added bonus.

Be clear, conditions are key, but pay either exacerbates negative feelings about bad conditions, or higher pay elsewhere exacerbates the attractiveness of good conditions as an added bonus, usually not the driving force.

And they'll pay back a lot more than 85k in loan repayments, the best median estimates I've seen suggest that full-time doctors will pay back £184k over 28 years... Plus all the usual taxes that everyone else pays part of which pay to train doctors, plus, all the time they give for free training students.

Someone's worth is not dictated by their salary. No a refuse collector shouldn't be paid more than a doctor wtf.

Nobody said a doctor , we are specifically taking about at "Jnr doctor" at the start of their career and earning potential. Please keep up or stop trying to twist what people are discussing.

Threads like these generally tend to attract some silly little trolls who can barely spell or punctuate and get their sense of worth from slagging off everyone who is more successful than they are with ridiculous arguments. If this is all this is then that's fine. If this is actually representative of wider public opinion then I despair and all the bright young things should just take the training and go off to Australia etc. where they are valued, given decent working conditions and paid properly.

Not sure what your point is and I could not give two hoots about you or your sob story, that was a hypothesis.

I have no sob story of my own, thanks.

sure, but don’t you want your doctor to be rested and not worrying about money?
I’ve had trainee doctors babysitting for me on weekends and evenings. Just on Bubble I’ve seen 2 doctors complementing their income this way.

But you brought up Joe who was on the breadline, and worked hard all his life …?