Are junior docs really only on £14.09 per hour?

[yawningmorning]

That is so low.

I've seen the headline that you can earn more per hour working in pret.

No wonder they are striking.

In short the answer is no, in the vast majority of cases, they do not earn £14 per hours as stated by the union, explain vert well here by @Hardbackwriter

Pay them more ffs. I don’t want to get operated on by some crap arse who failed his exams and can’t string a sentence together. Which is what will happen when all the clever kids fuck off and do something where they actually get paid a reasonable wage.

I have a couple of close friends who are doctors. It's an incredibly tough job and I have huge respect for those who do it. I think their conditions are absolutely appalling, and were even worse when they were earlier in their career. I just don't think any of them would be meaningfully addressed by a pay raise, and I think paying doctors anything close to 35% more would make some of their working conditions worse because of the way it would squeeze wider resources.

There's so much snobbery on this thread. "Well of course inequality is terrible and all that but it surely doesn't apply to doctors who need to be paid high wages or they'll bugger off abroad". That way of thinking is why we have so much inequality. The most privileged/highly skilled can travel the world to demand the highest possibly remuneration for their work, meanwhile normal, less skilled people see their wages fall as they are threatened that immigrants/people in poorer countries than do their job cheaper and better than they can.

"Well of course inequality is terrible and all that but it surely doesn't apply to doctors who need to be paid high wages or they'll bugger off abroad"

So you're a communist and you think that we should build a wall to stop all the doctors from leaving?

I get what you say about a pay rise not fixing the working conditions.

But if there was a pay rise then maybe we could attract enough junior doctors so we weren’t always short staffed so we could finish on time and get breaks and not always be being bullied into overtime.

The other thing is that being payed more allows you to throw money at the multiple issues the terrible working conditions create and so make life more bearable. The issues that the horrid long hours, changing city of work every 4 months to a year, nights, under 6 weeks notice of what your shifts are going to be etc create for your home life

When my daughter was born we could afford a full time nursery place or a nanny and it meant that not knowing what shift I would be working until a few weeks before wasn’t an issue because I had childcare sorted whatever. Now we can’t afford full time childcare so not knowing if im working until a few weeks before is awful as I am always begging the afterschool club to let me move my days etx. I found out on Friday I’m working the Easter weekend - four weeks notice to find bank holiday childcare - not easy.

its possible to work loads of antisocial hours with last minute demands if you have the support structure in place - if you don’t it’s exhausting, and unless your gifted with lots of close by friends and relatives it costs money (the fact you have to move hospitals every year also dosent help with the setting up of local support networks either)

Postgraduate entry to medical school has been a thing for years. It’s for those with a science undergrad degree (nursing most definitely counts) and then it’s “only” 4 years medical school not five so cuts off a little bit of the debt burden for medicine (but nowadays a student nurse dosent get their tuition fully covered so the total cost would be more or very similar). I don’t think postgrad medical training is really going to reduce costs but agree it does often have more diverse applicants and many are nurses. I have no idea why you would think that anyone would think graduates from these courses are lesser doctors - I honestly have no idea if my colleges did medicine as undergrad or postgraduate unless they volunteer the info.

@Florenz the nhs can’t get enough immigrants to come and work as doctors despite massive overseas recruitment drives so I don’t think that’s a concern. I think all doctors would love it if there were more doctors. The shortage of doctors isn’t driving up wages and so filling the vacancies because wages are fixed. So wages stay low, working conditions (and patient outcomes) worsen as you’re always doing the work of 3 people, so more doctors leave the profession/for abroad and it becomes a vicious cycle.

(and before someone calls out the whole “the bma voted to limit medical school
numbers I. 2008” no the bma passed a motion calling for medical school numbers to be tagged to f1 jobs available. As hospitals actually have to supervise f1s (unlike the rest of the junior doctors) f1 places are limited - and since you need to do that provisional registration year in the nhs to get full gmc registration and be able to work anywhere else or as any other sort of doctor the bma lobbied that it was unfair and rather stupid to have loads of qualified doctors that couldnt actually work as they couldnt get gmc registration. Clearly the simple solution would be for the nhs/government to increase the f1 places and so increase the number of medical school places to match but that’s far to sensible, so instead we have a massive shortage of all other grades of junior doctor but the inflow tap (f1) is kept strangled) and now we have a catch 22 where we would struggle to increase f1 and medical school post numbers massively because there simply aren’t enough more senior-juniors left to supervise them. )

Anybody on a salary is on crap pay once commute/unpaid work etc is taken into account.
I travel 28 hrs per week.
Ex dp used to point out I was on less than £10 per HR after commuting and stopping over. Used to piss me off with his calculations.

Medical staff have been particularly affected with below inflation wage adjustments.

www.ft.com/content/fac8062a-bd83-486b-ac6f-582f1931750b

If the government wants to think about minimum level of service- they should get rid of student grants for medics

twitter.com/DrLucyLu_/status/1635025515903094785?s=20

If you think it’s unethical for our doctors to go abroad - what do you think of NHS having recruited doctors and nurses from developing countries for decades to meet demands? Not sure how attractive NHS is now though 🤔

Some specialities still go abroad to recruit.

This

Absolutely. Ultimately medicine is a higher skilled more competitive job than teaching and the pay should reflect that.

It’s disgusting that we pay them the same as a pret barista.

The vast majority of science professionals do at least 4 years ( integrated masters at least) or 5 with year industry and such qualifications usually have higher A level requirements eg matural sciences at Bath is A A A and maths at Durham A A* A

Ridiculous isn’t it. We really need more doctors

I agree.

The working conditions need to be improved but the pay no. I find it difficult to have much sympathy when you see it outlined as you have above. I think the general public won't either.

I’m a consultant in Australia and it is unique to the UK for “the public” to argue that NHS doctors don’t deserve more money, even though their pay and conditions are much worse than Australia/NZ.

Why is this? Is if the fear of losing “our wonderful NHS”, is it because other private sector pay is also terrible and it’s a race to the bottom?

The general public in Australia don’t begrudge junior doctors their (superior to the UK) salaries. A decent proportion of them also choose to pay and go privately for things, people who choose to pay for a private consultation presumably don’t begrudge that either, or they’d go to the public hospital instead.

there will be a point - or maybe it’s already been reached - that your doctors won’t accept being paid much lower than in other countries, in worse conditions, with worse training and they will leave.

*other public sector pay, not private, obvs

British doctors are one of the highest paid in Europe www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/13/doctors-salaries-which-countries-pay-the-most-and-least-in-europe

And this is why we have a crappy health service. They will leave. Go where they are valued and treated as humans, not scum of the earth. I really despair for our future as we can't recruit from abroad anymore as pay and conditions are so bad, and our own staff are going too.
£14.09 for running the crash cart at 3am. Why would you ?

Its a temporary salary,I know a consultant who earnsnover 100k,has 2 houses etc.

Doctors in the UK are one of the highest paid in Europe,on bar with Germany

Consultants do earn good salaries.

After years AND YEARS of ADDITIONAL training, during which time they're still paid at junior doctor level.

The majority of doctors are not consultants. You can remain as a junior doctor for YOUR WHOLE CAREER. AND get paid £14.09 an hour for looooong shifts, zero work life balance and literally other people's lives in your hands.

That article isn't about junior doctors.

It also shows that England is near the bottom in terms of how doctor pay has increased since 2010 (It's gone down, unlike in most other European countries).

This article shows the pay of consultants and GP’s who have spent years training. This week’s strike is about junior doctors salary and working conditions which is nothing like what is highlighted in the article.

If only this were true. We're you not aware there is a massive recruitment crisis to many specialities (especially GP) and a huge retention problem? Talent flight to other countries.

I am not a doctor by the way, but do work in the NHS