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?

Quite.

I was surprised to read just now that:

As of Mar 4, 2023, the average annual pay for an Owner Operator Truck Driver in the United States is $244,358 a year.

It's not that high in the UK but much higher than the job sites indicate (they're not great for specialist jobs tbh).

Trucknet (the source of all wisdom regarding trucking) reckons about £4-5k a week is reasonable for an owner operator. Sounds about right as my employer lease our trucks out for £750 a day.

Can get a HGV license in a few days and be on way more than that though.

If you can do it so easily and get £29k+, why don't you- why doesn't anyone?!

YABU

Lots of professional jobs have very low starting salaries which ramp up pretty quickly as experience is gained, promotions achieved, further qualifications studied, etc. Doctors are earning well over average wage right from the start, whereas lots of professional starting salaries are well below, some barely more than minimum wage!

I’m a teacher. My colleague is leaving at Easter to become a train driver, as she’ll earn a lot more.
God knows what will happen to her GCSE classes this late in the year. I despair.

No issues with lower pay for the 1st couple of years.
I wouldn't want a new trained doctor on 80k immediately.
Maybe too much money can distract from the job ?

Why do so many people on this thread put so little value on people saving human lives? And what is so wrong with them expecting decent pay and working conditions for doing so? They are not asking for investment banker salaries, just salaries that reflect the years of studying and commitment that they are putting in. Why does it have to be a race to the bottom? So many ill-informed views. So much ignorance and jealousy. I despair.

Even if doctors and teachers are lazy, feckless, greedy etc, the cold hard truth is that they are leaving.

In Medicine we still get many applicants (unlike teaching). But increasingly they decide to leave after two or three years post-graduation. That’s a horrendous waste of public money. And a real risk to the health of the nation.

I don’t know why people are not more worried about our teachers and doctors leaving. We need them urgently. And thus surely we have to do what it takes to keep them.

Australia must be delighted. All these skilled UK medics that they did no have to train themselves.

Entitlement.

Back in the 90s I worked in Child Psychiatry and a good one could be a Consultant by their mid 30s. There were more posts than applicants so a good position to be in esp if your partner was a Consultant. You were on that level of money for the next 25 years. Still had to do the training and study though and that never stopped.

You were being rude about GPs and ignorant of their pressures.

People forget in the past you had to work on crap pay for years before getting pay rises in many industries.
Isn't the point doing the 9 to 5 or much worse and not leaving after 5 minutes.
Young people seem to want a great lifestyle and house too soon these days.
Everything has to be 5 star ..

I can't get too het up about this. I started on £13.5k and had to pay for 60 mile round trip fuel and parking. The point was I was in a career. And ended up on good money and I had to earn rubbish to get through my training contract.

It can't have come as that much of a surprise and if it did then you didn't do enough research into becoming a doctor which is frankly a little bit shoddy anyway.

What more shocking as pp have mentioned though is the disgustingly high salaries available to admin staff in the nhs. What value those high salaries offer I'll never know! Good luck OP you'll get there.

In fact doctors seem and care more about the life outside the job.
Everything is about when they aren't in the job.
Was life supposed to be all about personal life only ?

I have a consultant aquintance who earns 100k plus, she is in her 30s. GPs in my local surgery are earning nearly 100k as well, might have a rough start just like in any other profession but they will make up for it.

Oh give over.

The pay is decent, it's the working conditions that are out of whack.

People forget that years ago, families could afford for one parent to go to work and for the other to stay home with the children, whilst still affording to get a mortgage, albeit with the struggles of the time. Those people also got to retire earlier.

Something completely out of the reach of most young people today.

Definitely they will have years of earning 100k plus. And probably 4 day week.

I did.

Left a £35k office job and am on £45k now driving concrete mixers. Cost me £1800 and four days.

I was on £35k within a couple months of passing my test - did a few shit jobs to get experience. That was five years ago before the industry really started feeling the brexit pinch and started taking on new passes for jobs previously requiring two years experience.

And it's had the knock on effect that the shit £25k jobs which new drivers had to previously do are now having to pay more as nobody wants to do them. Guy I know makes a grand a week delivering booze to hotels/pubs etc. Piss easy job as he has 1-2 driver's mates with him to do the manual labour. And that's only on a Class 2 vehicle. Without being nasty he's thick as pig manure. 😂

Another mate with a Class 1 (arctic) license made £60k last year moving hire cranes around. Barely does 50 miles a week as often just has to keep moving them around the same site. He works four-on-four-off so gets a four day weekend after every 48 hours/four days.

It's supposed to be 4x12hr shift but in reality he sleeps and watches netflix most of the day. He doesn't do much but the crane can't move itself. Companies pay huge amounts for crane hire so him being paid £60k to mostly chill is a drop in the ocean.

I could earn much more but love my job and £45k is plenty for somebody like me with no plan to have kids (partner earns similar amount). Escaping office politics and corporate bullshit was the best thing I ever did. Hardly any mental exhaustion/stress compared to my £35k project management role. But most women don't want to wear a hi viz to work. It's not very glamorous.

I have been in the NHS for 30 years. I have never been so worried. My pay is fine and I have enough. But I have never seen teams so under-resourced. Referrals are being rejected left, right and centre as thresholds for acceptance have become sky-high.

Whatever makes the news is the tip of the iceberg. The public don’t see the reality. People are 100% going to become unwell and die because of the lack of staff. Where I work, nearly every week someone is leaving, from every NHS profession.

Private medicine depends on UK-trained doctors. So having private health insurance is no safeguard against poor care. We are all at risk. Terrifying.

Drop the snowflake bulls**t. Young people nowadays with the A Level grades you need for medicine can quickly get six figure salaries in sectors such as tech, the City etc. No point looking backwards. It's where we are now that matters.

Yes and years ago my parents never had a car, they rented the sofa/TV/cooker/fridge freezer. It was not later in life until they got a 2nd hand car, we used to put 50p in the Tv for it to work and in the gas and electric meter. The men from the prudential cant to loan money.

Now days every one must have a foreign holiday, a decent car, latest gadgets and phones. well paid jobs.

I called bullshit. I'm a GP. A partner. Not badly paid. Single parent. Modest house and car. One DC at uni with student loan.
No GPs I know can live on 2 days work.

Good comment. Why the need to be so unpleasant about an entire generation? It comes across as bitterness and jealousy.

Admittedly, I'll probably never be on £100k as can't be arsed getting my operator's license but I'm thinking of investing some of my inheritance in my employer as they're growing crazy fast and have a good share scheme - just need to do my due diligence. My mate invested when I was thinking of it and is already £8k up.

But I really value a life of low stress which is why I'm resisting their efforts to train me as a site manager. I come in, have a bit of banter, fill up my travel mug, and get on the road with Spotify/podcasts to keep me company. Don't do long distance so don't get lonely. Love it when the sun's out and I'd previously have been stuck inside.

I completely believe you because it is the same in teaching. We have no staff and are relying on either non specialists or cover supervisors and HLTAs to ‘babysit’ classes, and I say babysit meaningfully. Im not blaming them by the way, what else are they supposed to do.

Behaviour is tanking; pupils with additional needs are forgotten. Class sizes are huge and we have a number of pupils who don’t speak English in each class and no one-to-one for them.

Granted, it’s not a life and death situation, which is what we are starting to see in hospitals, but it’s bad. Much, much worse than what is reported. So I believe you entirely.