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?

Is he just NHS? He must get extra awards, responsibility payments, CEAs? to be so much over the top NHS consultant pay scale?

Yes I’m afraid no matter what people’s personal opinions (or resentments) are about Doctors and other HCPs, it’s a simple case of supply and demand! If you want healthcare you need these professionals! Therefore we have to ensure they want to work in the NHS.

@Notagardener "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!)"

Absolutely. I briefly worked in the NHS (not in a medical role) and saw the awful inefficiencies in the system. Getting more front-line doctors sounds great but would lead to huge problems with bottlenecks in training (not enough places for them or seniors to train them). There was an attempt to streamline and rationalise NHS IT around 20 years back, but went over schedule and vastly over budget, and eventually collapsed with nothing much to show for it.

The NHS probably needs more low-level admin staff more than anything else. Same with any big organisation, you don't want the highly skilled people spending their time doing jobs that could and should be done by others.

I think there are a lot of people who appreciate your husband's work while making the point that doctors need better working conditions, not more pay in order to find their work sustainable and fulfilling.

Just leaving this here.

The NHS is in this position, paying locums whatever they will take to work a day.

and make the reality of being a doctor/nurse/physiotherapist/etc in the UK more appealing (and yes, money is part of this).

Look at how few doctors work full time as GPs. It's clear that either we pay too much so they don't have to work full time OR a very nice pay packet is something they're happy to partially forgo because the work is a full time impossibility for many people. We'll get nowhere assuming it's the former. Assuming it's the latter, making the pay even more appealing will not help. GPs are simply not willing to do what they used to do.

You seem to value education so perhaps dig deep and try to recall what you learned at uni about differing opinions. It’s a very uneducated person who dismisses anyone who disagrees with them as having a silly argument. Also, you sound awfully snobby. Sort yourself out.

Yes and no.

A reg, consultant or Dr with special interest would earn this amount as a locum.

F3 etc £30 to £40 ph.

They wouldn’t have to pay locums if they could keep their own Doctors.

I don't agree that many enter the profession just because it is highly regarded. These are clever kids that can work out that they would be better paid using their brains in City jobs etc. And yes I do believe many of them could do very well in such jobs. But they would rather do something altruistic and meaningful to them.

I think this is naive. These are usually children who are stronger in science and considered law but realised medicine was the better fit, given they're good at chemistry. Very often it's the family business and they're aware that making it as a young lawyer is also very stressful. They know they're entering a highly paid profession and are surprised and disappointed to find the money takes a long time to start coming through. More importantly they are quite understandably distressed and frustrated that they are not able to use their hard earned skills properly because they are seeing patients without the proper funding and resources. At that point the "I'll do medicine not law because I'm smart at science" begins to feel like a flimsy reason, given the lack of money and job satisfaction.

For those saying junior doctors stay junior for a long time, it's really just a name. The reality is that doctors can reach the top level of their profession on a shorter time than you would expect in law or business. They can be a consultant within fifteen years. The consultants I know have pointed out to their kids that this is an advantage over law and business.

That's kind of you to say and working conditions do need to be improved although the fundamental nature of what people in any allied healthcare profession do cannot be changed. It needs to be celebrated and praised rather than being debated and criticised. I could not do it or handle the stress of making such decisions. I wouldn't want to either.

Unfortunately I don't think many people do appreciate what all healthcare professionals (I'm not just talking doctors) actually do for us. I also think that the sacrifices made during the pandemic have very quickly been forgotten. We cannot pay people who care for us when we are vulnerable, scared and in need enough. It should not be political. Just imagine the impact of co-ordinate strike action and that should tell you have valuable they all are to us....

*You missed the bit where the armed forces are sent away on deployment for months at a time and may be killed in action.'

The risk of death is very low and occasional.*

I find that very disrespectful and offensive, not to mention inaccurate.

I also think that the sacrifices made during the pandemic have very quickly been forgotten.

I think it might be the other way round with the pandemic - people remember all the sacrifices they had to make to ‘protect the nhs’. That was what lockdown was all about; protecting the nhs. And now they look back and think it wasn’t worth it.

As someone with both a high flying doctor and very successful solicitor in my immediate family, I have to say you seem, like many people within medicine, a bit rose spectacled about what life is like in comparable professions. Junior solicitors do not expect to get home before ten in many cases. They work through the night without warning. They work Saturdays. They don't have any guarantee that their career trajectory will go as they hope. It's not a competition but in terms of unsociable hours, uncertainty, sacrifice of work life balance for little medium term financial gain, the jobs outside medicine are also punishing and competitive.

Also the risk of PTSD and other long lasting effects anything but low and occasional.

Doctors shouldn't speak dismissively of other careers.

Exactly.

I'm confused. In one post you are suggesting better working conditions. In another you seem to be suggesting that locums are not used to fill gaps in roots. Which is it?

@Shelefttheweb you do know what 'protect the NHS' meant ? It meant stop more people getting sick because there were no more beds, no more staff and more people were dying. It wasn't anything to do with protecting the staff !

I don't live in London but my 3 bed terraced house is worth around £350k. Might get a shed for £50k

Garage up the road to me sold for £90,000 last week. Maybe a doctor could live in it.

Does this help explain ?

Gosh, read my post!
As I have already said, I know what city solicitors do and that they work very hard indeed. I have first degree relatives who are solicitors and others in the family/ friends. Regarding my immediate relatives, we were all very academic, hard working kids at school. They chose law, worked very hard and have made a tremendous amount of money and had far, far more job stability than we did during training. I will make clear that I am comparing being a junior doctor two decades ago to what they did rather than current junior doctors who work considerably less hours. We worked equally hard, obviously including weekends and nights for ridiculously low pay (£3+ an hour), moved jobs every 6 months initially, packing up our things one evening and starting the next morning, paying for all exams, being expected to run things with a lack of support, moving area to get further training, etc. There were many sacrifices made. My solicitor siblings can't believe how poorly paid we are for what we had to do. I am not complaining about my choice and wouldn't want to be a city solicitor for various reasons. I just don't think you have a clue what Medicine has been and is like.

And your assumption above about prospective doctors being good at/ liking sciences is also incorrect. I did sciences in order to do Medicine but could have studied other things and enjoyed them more. Many doctors are good all rounders and wouldn't want to work in a lab. Obviously, research scientists do an absolutely essential job, it's just not for me.

Good post. This resonates with me.

'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.'

@ProposedWarning spot on. The strikes are one symptom of the discontent in this country. Things are indeed a shitshow in the UK! No wonder so many doctors want to leave.