How much do you think junior doctors should be paid per hour

[Jill688]

you are being unreasonable - they should be paid £14/hr

you are not being unreasonable - they should be paid more

The issue is whether the public think we are paid enough or not, doctors do not feel we are paid enough. Therefore doctors are leaving. A lot is riding on these strikes. If pay doesn’t get increased I personally know DOZENS of doctors who will leave this year alone. From f2 up until consultant/GP level. Medical students are also supporting the strikes. So that’s the next 5 years of new doctors too, many of which will quit, or immigrate upon graduation. No one will sign an “nhs 10 year” waiver if they are having to pay £100,000 in student debt for the privilege, and often these contracts can be broken if you pay a fee, which they could if moving to Australia and earning more.

This isn’t a recent problem. Doctors have been underpaid for 15 years and it’s getting progressively worse. Unfortunately I do think the timing is bad, as like you say everyone is feeling hard done by currently. But I’m fairly certain that covid has hugely exacerbated this. Watching people work from home or be furloughed at a huge expense to the country while we carried on. That coupled with the rising cost of living, and horrific knock on effect of covid on our hospitals and primary care, the straw has now broke the camels back

I want them to be disgustingly well paid. These people save my life and that of my loved ones when necessary. I want them driving round in Ferraris, holidaying in the Maldives, unclipping a rolex to get the surgical gloves on. I don't understand how anyone can disagree. All the shite that gets funded, we should prioritise making doctors & nurses the wealthiest in society, as they once were.

So, taking their hourly wage and considering the years of training, skill required, level of responsibility, even outside of the conditions that they work in, people think they are properly compensated - that’s what I was talking about

It’s sounds out of touch?

What percentage of professionals work weekends ? and I’m sorry to say we already work weekends and there are not enough of us to cover this, if you fully staff hospitals at the weekend you would need more staff and more money. There just aren’t enough Doctors, it would take away staff from during the week.

Doctors (mainly) cannot work from home, you could also claim that was out of touch.

The 14ph is based on a 40hr week between the hours of 8-5 or 8-6 or whatever your contract is depending on the nation you’re working in. So you are uplifted due to more hours/unsociable hours. Some if someone works every second or 3rd weekend and by that I mean 3x 12.5 hour shifts Fri, Sat, Sun on top of the hours they work during the week then they are compensated for this by an uplift.

If you were a single Mother working these hours, how much do you think you would pay in childcare? Would childcare actually exist to cover this ? On top of this you have to move every couple of months/years, parking, definitely need a car for most jobs and student debt.

If we don’t value our Junior Doctors they are going to leave, not because they are chasing money, but because this lifestyle is not conducive to having a family, hobbies, buying a home. If juniors leave they won’t come back as Consultant and the hole gets bigger and ofc you can try to fill this by draining other countries of their much needed Doctors, but actually many of them are reconsidering this route too….. and thinking maybe the US or Oz is better ?

Just to add, is it really a coincidence that Medicine is now dominated by females yet we are now paid less than we were when it was a male dominated profession ?

I’m on several online medical groups. Someone posted on one just yesterday saying they are looking to relocate to the Uk from India. Hugely experienced doctor. Would be a massive asset. 50+ comments underneath from doctors working on the uk, every single one warning them not to come here. Go to Australia/Middle East/US/Canada. ANYWHERE but the UK. Where conditions are awful and even the general public, the people you are sacrificing time with your family to look after, think you are not worth more. Run and save yourself

What percentage of professionals work weekends ? and I’m sorry to say we already work weekends and there are not enough of us to cover this, if you fully staff hospitals at the weekend you would need more staff and more money. There just aren’t enough Doctors, it would take away staff from during the week.

Doctors (mainly) cannot work from home, you could also claim that was out of touch.

I worked weekends quite a lot, but, yes, could mostly do it from home, when not travelling, even before WFH became the thing. The differences are that my old firm pays newly qualified lawyers over £150,000 their first year, I was always well-supported by plenty of admin staff and co-workers, and while there was an intense mental load, it came in waves and was nothing like a doctor's. My mother's a GP (not in the UK) and I can attest that there's a way in which her mind never fully leaves work/her patients.

I think it's beyond disgusting that anyone could think any of these people from junior doctors to nurses to EMT crews to hospital cooks earns enough, never mind teachers and carers. I'm continually shocked that so many seem to have been turned against the people who educate our children and save our lives.

Great, so we should discourage social mobility. “ if you don’t have the financial cushioning of a middle class family, there it’s not financially possible to be a Doctor” is what you are essentially saying.

I’m gobsmacked!

Our health board put out a message on social media yesterday on the increase in attacks on staff in A&E.

Very disturbing

Here are some examples of adverts at attracting doctors out of the NHS and over to New Zealand and Australia. The doctors get many of these every day and many are moving overseas.

to reiterate Junior Doctors are not students they are extremely highly qualified professionals, god knows why they call themselves such a demeaning name.

A GP position in Australia. One of hundreds currently advertising. I get constant recruitment messages on LinkedIn and I haven’t even completed training yet (almost!). My husband thinks I’m utterly mad to want to continue to practice in the UK. He knows what a thankless job it is here and the sort of life we could have elsewhere. Im not expecting uk doctors to remotely match this. But what we are paid is simply not enough. The uk public for some reason seem to dislike doctors. Not the elderly vulnerable generation, the boomers and younger. I suspect I do need to get out but struggle with the concept of living away from my family. However what is likely to happen is I will finally have had enough and eventually go. Those without ties have already left. It is now reaching the point that people actually assume you may “CCT and flee” (complete training and move abroad). We will soon just create doctors for other countries

Well said. I’m an Australian consultant (working public/private) and it’s always overlooked on here that the public hospital system is also free at the point of use, just like the UK.

There are aspects of the private system I also have really come to appreciate (I didn't train in Australia) apart from my private income 😀 but that’s for another thread.

Here. Here. I’ll come 😄

No problem at all - very happy to help if you want to DM me 🙂

Tl;Dr we have a shortage of GPs especially in regional areas so we need more.

GPs in Australia are mostly private practitioners and are paid per encounter- with the highest remuneration being for procedural work. Basically the government will reimburse you for a given item number (eg skin cancer removal will have its own number, mental health assessment another etc) and then most GPs will charge a gap over and above that which the patient has to pay. Often GPs won't charge a gap to children and pensioners but it's their own choice.

So because you're paid according to billing and not hours worked, and the amount each item is billed for varies widely (procedural stuff attracts $$$, non procedural not so much), this means the salary varies widely but it also gives you a huge amount of control over what kind of work you can do / let's you play to your skills/ interest areas.

Especially as patients aren't registered to a clinic here, they can go where they like. So if you've got a good rep for (for example) palliative medicine or women's health then you'll build up that kind of patient cohort over time, along with just your bog standard usual variety of GP presentations.

eg there are GPs who love procedures and will have a whole day of skin biopsies etc, vasectomies, mirena implants etc. Others who love women's health and work in female only patient practices. Others who just do cosmetic medicine eg botox, fillers etc.

If you live outside of the main cities and are are least somewhat procedural you can make half a million a year full time. FYI if you work regionally you see far more complicated stuff and a lot of these GPs also do shifts in the local EDs. There's a special rural generalist scheme where some of our GPs even do c sections, do appys and choles, provide procedural sedation etc, run neonatal resus etc. But this is all optional, you don't have to do that stuff.

If you work in a main city and are mostly non procedural (this would be the least lucrative method) you cant bill as highly but you can still expect to make 150-200K a year full time. The patients are also far less complex/comorbid and city GPs refer earlier generally speaking.

There are certainly issues w GP here in Australia (mostly the government defunding it which means the GPs have to pass the cost onto the patient....and also the unequal compensation for procedural vs non procedural) but it's still a thousand times better than the UK.

That turned out to be rather long haha but please DM me with any questions.

Another advantage of the GP (or other private practitioner) system in Australia is access to private labs and imaging:

The government subsidises the cost of the usual investigations so most/all of the basic investigations are free.

For example, I am having periodic very heavy periods, prob because I’m perimenopausal but worth getting checked out. My GP may refer me for bloods/scan which I can get done within a day or so and which will be reported and back to fhe GP within 24 hours. There are “free” scanning places but I’ll choose one where there’s a small fee because I prefer them.

I could of course, not do any of this and ask for a gynae appt at the hospital where everything would be just like the NHS, just to emphasise that the public hospital system here is the same.

Pragmatically it means that GPs have a lot more autonomy with less gate keeping around basic investigations.

I really really go out of my way to ensure I don’t. My main contact with them has been when they nearly killed my son and I through negligence they then falsified my notes to try and cover up, giving up on my Dad who then survived 30 years. Putting me through months of tests and an operation to then tell me what I had told them and been dismissed months earlier. They’re useful in that they can dispense drugs but other than that they’re generally a bunch of uncaring fools who think they’re god. I’m sure there are good ones in there, unfortunately I’ve never actually met one. Thinking back to the med students at uni, I’m not surprised though.

@alwayscrashinginthesamecar1 'How much does a Doctor make in Australia? The average doctor salary in Australia is $156,000 per year or $80 per hour. Entry-level positions start at $124,937 per year, while most experienced workers make up to $253,500 per year.'

This is not referring to Juniors and the way you have written it is quite inflammatory. I have worked in both NHS and Aus system and you are not comparing apples with apples.

Juniors are a range skills wise. We’d be stuffed without them as extra hands but equally they are frustrating to train as their knowledge is pretty low and it’s really learning in the job with a steep curve. Given this, they really shouldn’t be paid they much tbh. Yes, they pull (or should pull, but they are trying to dodge this) enormous hours but this is their only learning opportunity essentially. While booksmart they are essentially unskilled labour, through yo skilled while working in the job. It’s really an apprenticeship in a way and apprenticeships are not well paid.

The difference is with expectations these days. Back in the day 6-7 Juniors would have piled into a 3 bed rental on the basis they would only need a bed once every few days for a few hours and would never be ‘at home’, and if so most others would be out so ‘musical beds’. Now Juniors blather on about having to rent a north facing flat for one as essential to ‘decompress’ and barrack to spend less graft on the job hours wise learning. The other difference is that Juniors rarely had families etc previously, now they seem to expect that they should have salaries that support family life rather than delaying families to down the track (and yes, potentially face missing out if you are a woman).

I did not see the issue with apprentice style wages on the basis that after your ‘apprenticeship’ you will be on a really pretty penny at senior and then consultant level if in the hospital system.

£20

to reiterate Junior Doctors are not students they are extremely highly qualified professionals, god knows why they call themselves such a demeaning name.

Because they have a LOT to learn. I have personal experience of this.

Back in the day 6-7 Juniors would have piled into a 3 bed rental on the basis they would only need a bed once every few days for a few hours and would never be ‘at home’, and if so most others would be out so ‘musical beds’. Now Juniors blather on about having to rent a north facing flat for one as essential to ‘decompress’

Gosh what snowflakes, imagine wanting your own bed to come home to after a 14 hour shift

Can you tell us what role you have?

@Bearpawk But there's a middle ground, the juniors don't seem willing to pay their dues at all. You see it in all professions in healthcare (and probably outwith healthcare too). They want it all and they want it now. I think @HoppingPavlova 's post was very balanced and made really good points.

no wonder the doctors are fl
ee the NHS if your attitude towards them is representative of management and patients

*fleeing

You mean these ‘juniors’, many of whom will have been juniors for many years, probably settled down and have family and responsibility - they want it all and want it now?