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?

A very large proportion of my course mates and the medics/ surgeons I know and have come across both professionally/ educationally are quite openly in the business due to either family pressure or their own desire for a well paid, prestigious career or intellectual interest. I'd say relatively few have joined for wholly or largely altruistic reasons.

The pay is shit for the hours worked and the responsibility the job entails.

First year needs to be around 40k in an attempt to encourage retention. No wonder Australia looks attractive.

There is no work from home as a Doctor and no leaving on time, you need to stay until the job is done.

Sometimes, my DC has been put on rota for three consecutive shifts to plug gaps. An enormous amount of time seems to be spent on plugging rota gaps. They didn't work three consecutive shifts by the way, as they would be unfit to carry out their job.

DC is working 8 connective shifts this week to help plug gaps, 12 hour shifts, but they will not get out on time. Think how tired they are going to be on the last few shifts, are they really going to be at their best. Yet, there is no-one to fill the tota!

Other DC has just started a desk job, better start pay 33k, can work from home 2 to 3 days a week etc.

It's not just doctors though. Who'd want to be a Dr, nurse, teacher,TA, carer, shop worker these days.
Shit pay,,.everyone thinks they know how to do these jobs better than the staff themselves. No work from home, no fitting round family life.

All the above type jobs need to pay more in order to retain staff.

Sorry I mean they are working 8 consecutive days !

I teach in an independent school. I see lots of medical applicants. All of them are fully aware, on paper, about the pressures, challenges, and pay-structure.

However, as PP have said, you don't really want medics to be lacking in self-confidence. And so nearly every one of those applicants thinks that they are somehow special, extra-resilient, and that they will sail through medical training and the Junior Doctor grind just as they have all sailed through school so far; everyone succeeds until they don't, and intending medics won't have "failed" school in any way. The number of applicants seems to be unaffected by any changes I've seen to pay and conditions.

I don't know what the answer to that is. I count myself lucky that medicine never appealed to me (and I was put off law by summer jobs in a law firm!) I had considered academia but my Ph.D. put me off that as well, and I'm (generally) happy with my career choice.

More of our STEM students are looking to engineering, but it's not quite the same pool (different strengths needed there).

Good question why is NHS using locums and BANK staff? Health cares assistants earn £22.00 per hour on a Sunday on a surge ward. During the week days the BANK staff can earn more than the permanent staff (this ruffles a lot of feathers). Back to the question why is it like this? Because nobody wants to work in that particular area or are reluctantly at best! To take on such a busy role as a locum doctor.

I think this thread shows there's a lot of wrong assumptions about medics pay and conditions.
As I understand it - the pay argument is all from the context "given the mammoth training burden, and the mammoth drain on personal time and emotional well-being" the pay isn't fair.
These are our hardest studying, most emotionally battered and longest physical endurance tested professionals and their pay should absolutely reflect that - and at all stages of their career, not just later in life when their kids are much bigger and they've gone through expensive times with childcare costs etc.
Clearly only a few doctors of the thousands in the NHS earn the megabucks that we all seem to latch onto.
If I go to hospital I want to be treated by clever, knowledgeable, awake staff with enough time to properly look after me.
The highly paid admin roles are doubtless few and far between too - again these stick in our heads though.

The main issue is public spending has been starved and there are just not enough staff anywhere in the system, which makes it even more stressful for those left.
I totally sympathise with the strikers 💪

Where I live, plumbers and electricians charge £60 to £150 an hour.
These people are also highly skilled yet no expects then to work for a junior doctors wage. The shortage of electricians and plumbers in London means they can name their price and get paid it.

Totally agree with teaching strikes too! Very similar "beat up on" situation for them in my view - horrible stress and massive expectations from Ofsted, SLT, parents, students - just without the added life and death decisions under pressure and no sleep.

Being a doctor is a VERY long term plan and there’s a massive hit at the beginning

I can’t believe anyone would take a job and train without finding out salary first

my friend did few years as a locum and cleared her debt now in her mid forty’s on big money

I don’t think it’s that helpful to compare to other jobs by minimising their challenges and saying ‘Medicine is the hardest’. And I say that as a consultant of thirty years. Many careers have their difficulties and stresses; we just need to ensure the ones associated with being a doctor are recognised and remunerated.

And I wanted to just point out that not all consultants go private. Many of my colleagues like me are full-time NHS and have zero desire to work in the private sector. Or play golf. The NHS pay scales are out there and I am ok with my pay. It’s enough.

I would like the NHS to value its nurses, doctors and other staff though. Give them computers which work. Pay them the right amount at the right time. Give junior doctors their rotas in good time. And make sure antisocial hours are paid proportionately.

This has to be the last strike. I am interested at how little media coverage there has been. In my Trust we normally have several juniors based in each of our A and Es. On Monday night we have no doctors at all other than one consultant at one A and E in my speciality. How this is safe, I have no idea. I am covering for all the juniors on my ward. I am not enough. People will suffer and die. Even simple stuff like being prescribed paracetamol won’t happen for many patients, never mind the serious stuff. Fingers crossed, hey.

I support all our public sector workers, from teachers to firemen to police. I also support shop workers, transport workers, civil servants, cleaners etc. Hey I even don’t want lawyers working ridiculous hours in the City, and recognise that new criminal barristers have hours not dissimilar to junior doctors at times, and crap pay. I support the junior doctors but can also be aware that they are not alone in having poor conditions.

I want to understand what has gone wrong in the UK. Why we seem worse than Europe in so many ways. From our health service to our childcare costs to our housing prices. This doctors’ strike is only one part of the shitshow here.

I'm a research scientist and it sounds quite similar to our starting salaries and progression except it takes 7 or 8 years to qualify and there is very little job security (in academia you might be in temporary postdoc positions until your 30s, in industry you'll get a permanent job faster but redundancy and relocation can be a part of life depending on your field).

What are the entry requirements for medical students these days? In my day it was 5 As at Higher/5 A levels. If the requirements have come down any, that might suggest that the pay is too low compared to other graduate jobs. But I suspect it us as popular a career choice as ever what might actually help give doctors better working conditions would be to train more of them, so they can work a more normal number of hours - and so we as patients can expect our life changing care decisions to be made by someone who has had some sleep.

@ProposedWarning 👏👏 too right it's a shit show indeed.

Lots of posts on here already so I doubt you'll read mine but for what it's worth, no it doesn't shock me, that looks like a pretty normal professional graduate salary to me, and yes, 40+ hours per week is often typical too.

I think the NHS is appallingly managed and I'm sorry for the conditions that Drs have to work in, but that's the bit that should be fixed, not the wages IMO. The pay demand is outrageous so I don't really know what you're trying to achieve.

A healthcare system that relies on locum shifts in order to function is not a good thing.

Locum shifts represent gaps in the workforce. In general terms, needing a locum often means that without them the rota or staffing levels would be dangerous instead of just awful.

Short-term or single locum shifts cost the NHS a lot, a good chunk of which goes to locum agencies rather than to the actual people doing the work.

The easiest way to reduce this spending (freeing up that money to be spent on other things) would be to improve recruitment and retention. To do this, we need to address the unacceptable things people working in healthcare have to cope with on a regular basis (please see my earlier post), and make the reality of being a doctor/nurse/physiotherapist/etc in the UK more appealing (and yes, money is part of this).

We don't need to be arguing about whose job is more important or whether it's better to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or whatever... Society needs all these jobs and lots of people in lots of jobs should be getting paid a lot more than they are. We shouldn't be angry at each other; we should be angry at the government and previous governments for creating this situation.

I'm an F1-equivalent doctor in Australia (mature entry, I'm in my 30s). My base salary is about 43K GBP and my actual gross earnings for the year will be in the range of 54-60k GBP, once overtime + allowances are applied. Yes, cost of living is higher here, but it's still a significant difference.

At my hospital, nearly 20% of our junior doctors are from the UK or Ireland, and that number rises every year. Most don't plan to return. We're delighted to have them (and it plugs holes in our own problems with doctor training) but it should be a huge red flag to the UK/Ireland that things are not OK, regardless of whether outsiders regard the pay and conditions to be acceptable.

We are loosing a lot of junior doctors to Australia and New Zealand. Previously the juniors would go for a year or two and come back but that's not the case anymore.

Unfortunately this is true.
Many of the medics I know entered the professions because of family pressure which is why some find it difficult to cope with the demands of the profession.
Many of them freely admit this.

I am really shocked at some of the posters' opinion about the medical profession here.

I don't think people who don't work in NHS realise how much work is done out of goodwill of HCPs. The profession attracts people with certain characteristics and NHS fully utilises this!

This thread makes me incredibly sad. I have lived with my husband since he was in medical school. He is now a medical consultant. Although, he is paid comparatively well there has been a real terms loss in pay of around 35% over rather last 10 years.

However, no amount of money can compensate for the sacrifices he and our family have made for his career. He is there when people are in their final moments, allowing them to have as dignified death as is possible. He takes abuse from relatives on a daily basis because he can't save their parent/spouse. He works over his contracted hours weekly because of staff shortages/illness to ensure continuity and safety of care for his patients. He has to work caring for other people's sick relatives when his own children have been hospitalised. He worked on red wards the entire pandemic having to make decisions most people can't comprehend. As a consumer of the nhs, if I was sick and dying I would want a dedicated, caring doctor looking after me and therefore we can't be selfish when it comes to my husband having to do this job.

The public recieve such a sanitised version of what doctors, nurses and AHPs etc do, so that they cannot truly comprehend what the job entails or the toll it takes on the staff/families. He does the job, not for money, but for the desire to help and make things better. We would trade any salary to have him around more often. But before people say that Drs etc are paid well enough etc they need to truly understand how shit the job is and what it's actually like to work in such a high pressured environment.

Completely agree with this.

This may come as a shock to you, but the part of the country within a 20 mile radius of where you live is not the only part of the country where people get sick, have accidents and have babies.

The rest of the country needs doctors too, including places like - dare I say it - that there London.

No it doesn't shock me.

Ive been teaching 19 years and earn 34k the same as a a F2 doctor. I do 4 days a week which equates to 35 hours (term time) although it 0.8 contract. Full time I'd get 43k.

I did 5 years at uni too. First years are extremely hard graft. It is not an easy job. Obvious difference being is that I don't make life and death decisions and my grades weren't good enough to be a doctor. I dabbled with the idea of doing past grad medicine when I was 29 but it was cost prohibitive. Most medicine applicants are still public school educated in the UK.

Health and education are not the place to work right now.

It's working conditions not pay that bed improving.

I have already said that once you are a GP or consultant you earn a lot. Someone did not believe that my husband could survive on working just 2 days. However 1/5 of £150000 is still a lot.
Improve working conditions yes. By getting more admin and other HCP to free up time for doctors to do real doctors' work. Juniors spend a lot of time not saving lives but with admin work.
Our registrars don't want more doctors as it would compromise their training but they need more admin staff etc to do the "crappy" work (but still important!)

2/5 of £150000....

And why do you assume they will stay in this Country where they are disrespected and unappreciated?