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?

I think this is one of the problems.

The responsibility has risen up the tree and the possible interventions are much greater. Now, Consultants are in the hospital at night far, far more than they used to be when I was a junior. At that time, the medical take was run by the SHO (1-3 years qualified) from around midnight. Consultants in some specialties are also up in the night and still working the next day/ rest of the week/ all weekend, etc whereas the juniors hours are now far better protected than they were when I was a junior doctor. It's not what it used to be at all.
Apart from that, salaries, even really good ones, buy far less than they used to. If you compare the purchasing power of a Consultant's wage 30 years ago compared to a new Consultant now, there is no comparison.

There is endless confusion amongst the public on this because the junior doctors contract was changed in 2017, but only affecting people graduating from 2022.

On these threads everyone bemoans the salary of doctors, but they are on two completely different sets of conditions and pay, according to graduation date.

89% of junior doctors surveyed this year are thinking of leaving the nhs. This wouldn't be the case unless the situation was very dire, and the pay and conditions not worth it.

You may think this is t a problem for you or your family, but it is.

The comparison to bin men is just silly. Let's see a show of hands of bin men vs doctors at the golf club.

Has anyone ever met a 40 year old "poor" doctor. No.

The conditions newly qualified doctors and other HCP have to work in is the real scandal. You wouldn't want a pilot flying your plane on a +50 hour week, why is ok that a sleep-deprived doctor's stitching your face?

You mean exorbitant in your opinion. Others may be prepared to pay well for medical care.
The fact that bin men and paramedics should be paid more is not relevant.

I'm not suggesting that doctors should have equivalent pay btw but it is the case that the top students who go into medicine could be earning far more in different professions.

Some of them could. But it's a small percentage. Because there just aren't that many super high earning jobs around.

But that's the same for everyone, not just doctors.

The problem is that doctors think they should be paid many times what a normal person earns, instead of just more than a normal person earns. 50 years ago doctors earnt a good wage but not that much more than the average wage. Doctors have just got ideas above their station IMO.

I'm talking about the sort of calibre of candidates who end up in medicine who tend to get top grades and be extremely hard working. As I said on a previous post, I am comparing the top professionals (top corporate lawyers) I know who are siblings of or married to doctors.

It's very relevant because there is just one money pot and and parity is important.

I really hope you are not at peace with the ridiculous rates being paid to locum doctors on the NHS especially GPs. You will lose all my sympathy and respect if so. The NHS cannot afford it and it's a measure of its desperation. You won't find 'others' ok with it either-no right thinking individual could be.

@Florenz What normal people are you thinking of?

And don't forget that most new doctors will pay back 6 years' worth of loans, not 3, or none in the case of, say, plumbers.

And dont forget that the new plan B loans are 6% interest from student year one, compounded, as well as parents having to find huge sums.

Therefore new doctors are shafted every which way, over others. More study, more loans, more years, less salary than colleagues. Result? Mass exodus.

I think junior doctors are very much underpaid, but the salary quoted is based on an average 40 hour week, an average 48 hour week would be £35261. That is assuming no weekend work at all. If they work one in every 4 or 5 weekends, their annual salary would be £37025. It works out an awful lot more than I get per hour!

What is the same for everyone? I don't think most people in the 30s-60s do jobs where they are at work during the night performing life saving procedures/ surgery/ making extremely difficult decisions about very sick patients/ performing emergency caesarians to save lives.
I honestly can't think of another job where similar is expected. Obviously there are plenty of other extremely challenging ones but not the same and certainly not 'everyone'.

'Doctors have ideas above their station IMO' Ha! This just just sounds like jealousy.

I'm talking about the sort of calibre of candidates who end up in medicine who tend to get top grades and be extremely hard working. As I said on a previous post, I am comparing the top professionals (top corporate lawyers) I know who are siblings of or married to doctors.

But it's not just about getting top grades. The bankers and lawyers who end up on millions have a different set of skills on top of that, that are more commercial and business acumen focused. They can generate business opportunities.

Now naturally some doctors could have that too, but it won't be just people who get top grades and are extremely hard working. There are many, many lawyers like that, on decent but not huge salaries.

www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/damning-survey-results-reveal-scale-of-junior-doctors-hardship

That’s a bit like saying “doctor pay looks low mainly because lots of doctors end up in specialties where they can’t make shed loads of money from private practice”. You can’t cherry pick only the most successful in law and use their salaries as a comparator for all medics.

@Cloudhoppingdancer I'm not looking for your respect.
Again, the appropriateness of the rates is a matter of opinion. Many people are prepared to pay for good medical care. You may not be which is entirely your right. If good medical care is considered important or even essential, rates and t&c need to be provided which attract and retain staff.

@TheKeatingFive I fully understand that there are many other skills required for these roles and that not every medical candidate would be suited to a corporate role. The skills can be learned and developed over the years just as those of medical staff are though.

brightest and best

It's not the case that any doctor could walk into a high flying top paying non medical job. They're not necessarily the brightest and best at finance, law, education or design!

They could perhaps contribute greatly to research, where the brightest and best tend to be more academically brilliant but paid much less? I doubt they'll be interested in that.

It's also not the case that medical students choose to sacrifice anything in a life of medicine. This used to be the case - overlong hours, GPs on every other night etc. Fortunately it is much better now and the complaint is not at much sacrifice as poor working conditions and a lack of early financial reward. And I have sympathy with the poor working conditions bit and can understand why doctors emigrate (with their considerably smaller student debt, thereby enjoying the best of both worlds). Doctors may not be aware that young solicitors going for the top jobs pull all nighters without warning and rarely get home before ten and usually work part of Saturday. It's the case! They don't have a good work life balance at all. Ditto the brightest and best in business. None of these professional rewards come without a high price. The difference is the expectation that the NHS can somehow change this whereas no one expects a hedge fund manager's employer to care!

What utter cobblers.

You won't win any hearts and minds without respect.

But please tell me. Are you really comfortable with our cash strapped NHS paying a GP 600 pounds sterling (sometimes considerably more) to show up for a day? Are you really going to try to justify that?

The skills can be learned and developed over the years just as those of medical staff are though.

Personally, I'm more inclined to think great sales people or client relationship developers are born not made. Some people just have an instinct for this stuff. It's certainly got nothing to do with 'top grades' though you'd need those for other aspects of the job.

…and then 20 years later they start charging private patients almost 300 quid per consultation.

Most professionals have to work long hours for little pay in the beginning. Plus I’m pretty sure people have know about the conditions for doctors for many years now so it shouldn’t come as a shock to new recruits.

Paramedics? Firefighters? Armed services? All these work at night under high stress making difficult decisions with lives in their hands - including their own life.

I am talking simple economics and market forces. Law is saturated and not all law degrees are equal. That is part of the reason why many lawyers don't earn much at all - they think they are going to be magic circle and they end up in boring and low paid jobs with low salaries. In many cases the work is not that challenging either. Medicine is not saturated and all medicine degrees are equal. There is no oversupply of qualified doctors, quite the opposite. No market forces at play to keep their salaries depressed, just an unreasonable employer with a total monopoly. Totally different things. Also, we are talking about F1/F2s here, not doctors in specific specialities.

I think it's clear that most people aren't as shocked as the OP had hoped.

As I said earlier, the brightest male candidates who may previously have entered Medicine are now choosing the much more lucrative city careers, hence the much higher percentage of women in Medicine. Obviously, not every single doctor would be successful or suited to a corporate career but many have the ability and aptitude to turn their hand to lots of things and develop their skills.
I am very well aware of what is demanded of city solicitors as I have a number of relatives in this profession. I am not trying to pretend that it is easy, the opposite is true, but the financial rewards and perks of the job are far, far greater. Let's not pretend that this is not the case.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with paying highly skilled professionals, who provide life saving medical care, the salary they deserve. In any case, regardless of my opinion or your opinion, the NHS needs to pay a rate that attracts and retains the staff as I have already said above. Are you more in favour of the NHS paying Deloitte consultant a couple of thousand a day or a medical Consultant who performs life saving surgery? I know what my preference is.