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?

This is another one of those threads that proves talking makes much sound and little heat. A day before the start of the planned strike, the Health Secretary deems it worth playing chicken.

Strike. Repeatedly. Until you need to reach an acceptable outcome. Likewise consultants. Let the market speak. The issues have multiplied over the decades because the market has been suppressed. Just strike and keep doing so. Medical schools are full of people who will strike when their time comes if you don't now, and you may have been one of them a few years ago, too,

Non-medical consultants are paid by Government departments in excess of £1000 an hour so why is one of those worth more than five NHS consultants, when they are much much more easily replaceable. Is keeping people in power is worth more than keeping people alive? A general strike could drain power very quickly. Let's see how the market will deliver if all doctors strike. The Government (hiding behind hospital managers) is happy to play chicken hence they're the ones the country must hold to account.

It's a decent entry level wage in a professional job my view. Experience is what gets higher pay, same for lawyers etc. The earnings potential is huge for doctors, the pension while expensive is something most can only dream of.

If you want the big bucks you need to go into investment banking. The hours aren't great though.. 70-80+ a week... if you survive the internship (many don't) you get about double that as a starting salary but don't expect any form of time off for decades...

So you haven't paid into a pension? That's on you mate.
All doctors pay almost 15% of their income into their pension. For hospital doctors this is matched by their employee. Like all employee pensions.
For GPs they pay both aspects so almost 30%. For many years. It's not a gift FFS.
WHEN AND ONLY WHEN you have paid 30% of you income for 30 years can you grumble how unfair it is

It's an absolute disgrace when starting salaries for much less valuable jobs are higher.

Also it's not a training job. It's a job where you are acquiring additional skills and greater experience in service.

They aren't supernumerary, they are an essential part of the workforce.

If his heart is set on medicine and he knows what he's getting into, it can be a rewarding career and a medical degree is highly transferrable - I know people who have done their degrees and then gone into a totally different career path.

Maybe show him this thread? He'll get an idea of the general lack of respect or compassion we receive from people on a daily basis. And show him my previous post - I've listed just some of the things I've personally experienced so far.

If my DC asked me if they should go into medicine in the UK, I would have to say No. I wouldn't want my DC to go through what I did, and I think conditions for current junior doctors are even worse than they were for my cohort.

If people are condemning junior doctors and other healthcare professionals, perhaps they should first think about the first-hand accounts of what it is like to be in those jobs, and would they want that for their own children.

Wow I didn't realise that. That's disgustingly low. Starting salary for teachers is 28k now and obviously striking for more

(I'm a teacher before anyone thinks I am teacher bashing and I do not think a new teacher should be paid that much at all as to be honest they've had 1 year of training and still know sod all and are still effectively training at that point. To know their starting salary is only just below that of a doctor when qualifications can be much much lower is shocking. I would be disgusted if a brand new teacher was earning more than a doctor. I think I earn a really decent amount however I don't agree with current working conditions in schools with behaviour and workload but that is separate to pay. You could pay me an extra 10k and I wouldn't do my job any better than I do now because there are not enough hours in the day for me to do so)

Two family members are recently qualified GPs. Both have elected to work part time (3 and 4 days a week respectively), because they have decided they will earn enough money for the lifestyle they want and they value more free time.
They have been educated almost entirely at tax payer expense, and now have secure jobs, good pensions.
They are on bigger salaries than the £29k you quote, (one is a GP in Slough, the other in Cardiff…just mention this in case there are regional differences).
They are paid enough, and it is set to only get better for them as their careers progress. Good for them.

All the posts about the NHS will collapse…. Don’t look now but it already has. Having lived overseas for years, I am shocked at how poor the service is that we are supposed to be grateful for. The propaganda during Covid was insulting to most people in relation to how hard ALL the NHS staff were working. They weren’t. A minority were working their socks off but those in specialised professions, including surgeons were working from home running meetings on zoom. So no - I don’t think the starting salary is shocking. Over the life of a doctor, they will earn significantly more than the average person. They work for a broken organisation that in any commercial setting would have gone bankrupt years ago. Must go, gotta stand outside and clap the NHS…. Slow clap….

Then leave to get a different job or the same job in another country that pays more & has better conditions.

Reading this is eye-opening, how quickly the memory of 2020 fades.

I don’t know where you are getting this information from my son 22 has just had to fill in his student finance for his 4th year, so WE (taxpayers) pay only for one year, for something that he has hard to work incredibly hard on since his GCSE’s and has many more years to go.

When I worked part-time in a university admin job, I was contracted to work 17.5 hrs a week, i.e. half-time, and by and large that's what I did. When I finished work I could switch off my PC and go home, and not think about my work until my next working day. If I cocked up, a few people might be slightly inconvenienced. Nobody would die. I wouldn't be sued. I didn't have to pay for my own training. I was paid close to £29k pro rata. I seriously doubt that part-time GPs are working 7-hour days with an hour for lunch. If you look at the hours a so called part-time GP works, it would be more like a full-time job for most of us.

Wrong thread?

6-8 years after graduating you'll be a consultant on 88 grand. My husband qualified as a nurse 5 years ago and is on 33. Go cry into your coffee 🙄

Not wishing to insult anyone’s occupation or there value unlike you. however people really do not realise what it takes to even get on a medicine course. All exams GCSE’s and A Levels need to be A* in maths and sciences, months and months of volunteering in hospitals or care homes, weeks of work experience and when from a working class family with no doctors that means loads of rejections, sitting an incredible hard UKCAT exam all BEFORE even applying for a medicine degree.

That is total rubbish. Go and read what I have written and remove the massive chip from your shoulder.
If you genuinely come from a family of doctors, I feel rather sad for you because you clearly dislike them and seem jealous.

Neither teachers not nurses degrees are as long as doctors, also nurses can earn from their first year working as bank nurses. Also the criteria for their degrees are completely different and takes years and I mean years before hand, A* GCSE’s snd A levels, months of work experience and volunteering, entrance exams, interviews etc. they are not the same.

They are doing so and have been for years. Why do you think there are so many vacancies?

I am genuinely shocked at the contempt people on here are showing for doctors.

Care workers haven’t spent 5 years doing a degree and the years before trying to get a place

Some people enjoy the race to the bottom or are jealous, unfortunately.
I haven't seen a single doctor saying that other professionals such as nurses, teachers or others don't deserve to be paid better and treated with respect.

@Tessabelle74 -it's not 6-18 years after graduating. 10-12 years typical, more in competitive specialties requiring pHds. 5 years is still very early in a doctor's career following 5-6 years at Uni and with different entry requirements.

The buck always stops with the doctor. HCA, nurses, everyone escalates. So much responsibility. Of course they should be paid well and have better working conditions. I don’t want to be their 100th patient or decision of the day. Good luck with the strikes.

This is exactly right. Buck always stops with the doctor, endless rapid decision making and vital decisions at that. Full respect for other HCPs but all of them admit that they do not do the same job and most of them wouldn't want to in my experience.
Thanks you for your support for the junior doctors.