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?

Also as an NHS dentist, I think people would be shocked at how little we earn also despite our five year degree etc etc but would never dream of complaining about the pay or striking as I didn't enter this profession for the money

Do you honestly think it’s just greed? Honestly?

Is it greed to expect to be paid enough, as a professional, to be able to afford childcare?

In terms of junior doctors leaving, perhaps we should operate like for those with army bursaries; require junior doctors to work for the NHS for eight years or they have to buy their way out by paying the difference between uk and overseas medical school fees. That way we would at least recoup the cost of training and stop Australia benefitting from uk students getting cheaper training here.

But v v v v v v few earn that £100,000. Most earning £40 - £50,000.
The contract is for an average 48 hours a week. So some are much more, up to 72 hours. This extra should be paid, but v often isn't. None seem to be less so not sure how the average is worked out.
This is the uplift in hourly rate the doctors want.

Excellent make conditions worse that will definitely help

Why don’t you have a pension? And why are you only working half the year? Have you considered working the full year and putting those earnings into a SIPP?

@Shelefttheweb what about the £80,000 + student debt ? If they had any sense they'd write off some every year until fully gone after say 10 years in NHS. Think that would go down v v well.
But they still need to earn enough to live.

I work in a medical field with junior doctors at varying levels of training and a newly qualified doctor is not a dreadfully useful thing in most wards. Less use than most nurses who they outearn from day 1 considerable. By the time they're in their 30s most can get to consultant stage and then from there their salaries ramp up to and then beyond 100k.

So no I'm not shocked and not an I horrified. The payoff long term is great. The growth in salary exponential.

That the figures you've quoted are an oversimplification / slightly misleading ....

Basic Salary £29,384 for a 40 - hr week

Weekends - a scaled supplement ranging from 15% for every other weekend, 0% for <1:9 weekends, most people will be on 1:6 - 1:8 (3-4%)

Hours between 40 and 48 paid at:

£14.09 if between 07:00 and 21:00
£19.30 if between 21:00 and 07:00 (this is the 37% for unsocial hours, and doesn't include weekend days)

So on a 1:8 rota an F1 would earn

£29,384+£881.22 (weekends)+
£3081.72 (nights)

=£33,347

As an F1 in 2005 I earned £22,000 basic, plus 80% banding for 9 months plus 100% banding for 3 months = £40,700, so 22% more in absolute terms 17 years ago, than current doctors earn now, and that's without even adjusting for inflation, the fact that hospital accommodation has been removed, GMC fees have increased, as have pension contributions, medical school debt and university fees and student loan interest rates.

Just in plain terms, a newly qualified doctor today in more than 30% worse off than I was 17 years ago. With inflation taken into account, it's beyond a joke.

As someone in a similar but different profession, with a dental phobia what the hell else would take someone into dentistry but the money 😱

The rest I agree with.

@user1471556443 why ? Because they want to become doctors, not necessarily intending to stay here. Some are refugees who intend to return to help in their home country, some want a career that they can use to help others as they know his hard life can be. And some, even knowing how tough it will be, still want to help the NHS. None go into it for prestige. Who the hell would do that after reading this thread !
I believe in the NHS. Having lived and worked abroad I value it so highly. And I want the people working in it to be paid their worth. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, porters, HCAs. That's why I'm trying to put out there what we could have if we kept our doctors and nurses here in the UK, by improving their pay and conditions.
Being a teacher I've heard the 'don't like it then leave' phrase so many times. And loads of my colleagues did just that. Doctors are now doing the same but we could stop it. Don't we want to do that ?

Did you enter the profession for the love of plaque? Genuine question.

@Forgooodnesssakenow I know an F1 who on their very first shift was handed the bleep overnight. They had to useful v v fast.

what about the £80,000 + student debt

Quite, why should they have training subsidised by the UK so it only costs them ~£80k, compared to in excess of £200k plus living expenses for overseas students, if the UK is not going to benefit from that training?

@FixTheBone you say it better than I ever can.

"Just in plain terms, a newly qualified doctor today is more than 30% worse off than I was 17 years ago. With inflation taken into account, it's beyond a joke".

@Shelefttheweb but it doesn't cost that to train a doctor. Those costs are based on some spurious maths by the government which assumes trainees get individual lessons. And medical students do some of the grunt work in wards so can they get that paid now then ?

@Shelefttheweb oh and all STEM degrees are subsidised so do all those graduates have to pay their extra costs back too ?

What do you plan to do with all the non UK trained medics? Are you going to pay their home countries for their training?

Not to mention the absolute disrespect and abuse in which they can expect to be treated if this thread is anything to go by.
Quite why any bright young person would want to do medicine in this country is beyond me.

Mumsneedwine, I can tell you 100 percent that A LOT of drs DO go into this profession for the prestige so you are wrong to say nobody is going into it for this reason. Out of the five year dental degree, the first 2 years of this degree were completely integrated with the medical pre clinical degree as it was in those days, so I studied alongside the 300 medics in my year group at a London medical school and can tell you that the majority, WERE attracted by the prestige and status

A new graduate this year with the median £75k of student loan debt will pay back £184,000 over 28 years if working full time....

...should just about cover it.

As I said earlier, I have the greatest sympathy for the appalling conditions that doctors have to work in and 100 percent believe this should be addressed, but more money being paid to drs is not the answer to this

There are some really odd opinions on here. A junior doctor should start at £45k . Plus anyone doing medical training should have no Uni fees at all (including nursing) provided they spend at least 4 years post qualification working for the NHS.

I would bring some kind of similar arrangement in for dentistry, teaching, social work, policecetc- basically anything involving public service and not immediately going into private practice.

Otherwise how on earth do we expect to retain doctors/nurses etc on piffling wages plus massive debt

You talk actual complete shit. I have been a doctor for over 20 years. The vast majority of doctors don't do it for prestige or money. What codswallop. Most of us did/do it because we are altruistic/fixers/helpers and do actually want to help people as facile as that sounds.
Did you question each of those 300 students to find out their reasons.
I find that so rich coming from a dentist who are the greediest money grabbing of all paramedical professions. I don't know any dentists who do it for the love of good teeth. A lot are failed medical school applicants. I spy a big huge bitter chip.