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

I'm not sure you read my reply. I said I think parking should be free and exams very heavily subsidised. I'm not suggesting it should be met from 29£k. But it's a decent starting salary for a year or so and then it rises pretty fast. No one think all junior doctors should be on 14pph, but most people understand that's the starting salary that's low and then it goes up from there. I don't understand the cost of tuition argument - doctors get a pretty good deal on study finance. Imagine paying 30k+ to train for a job that pays half the salary and without the social caché. (My preference would be to pay for the lot from general taxation. )

I support junior doctors, but when looking at public sector pay you have to take into consideration the pension contributions they get, which equates to around 30% of salary per year.

So it’s £14ph x 1.3=c. £18ph. That gives annual equivalent of £37k.

You have to add it because private sector only gets about 3% so the packages are not equivalent. I know people will say “yes but you can’t live pension contributions while you’re working”… I’d respond “you can’t live on your working life wages in retirement”. So you have to think of it as deferred pay.

Rant over. They should be paid more.

PS is £14ph before or after tax?

An hour? Blimey. I should have worked harder at school. 🤔

Also - free parking for clinical staff, and exams/training/professional insurance fees all covered by the NHS

This - definitely.

They should start on £20/hour

I say this as an ally of doctors - the public won't be stoked at the idea of a 35% pay rise. They need to focus on the state of the nhs and working conditions - including paying for mandatory exams, parking etc. Doctors have had historically a very good deal pay wise, and the last ten years it's been falling and now it's only decent. A tough pill to swallow but there it is.

Someone I know suggested they should be in a starting salary of £60k. I thought that was ridiculous.

A junior doctor is anyone below consultant level. So includes people newly qualified right up to senior registrar.

I think the pay is important but the working conditions are the worse part , their terms and conditions are so idiosyncratic is almost impossible to explain them. The fact that they have to move every 4 months , the inability to book leave , the fact that their pay is almost never correct because of the complex system of allowances and the fact that they move hospitals do often means they spend most of the first five years on emergency tax codes, the inability of trusts to cope with the constant turnover ( some doctors spend by whole jobs without a log in because the IT is so antiquated).The cost if the constant moving house is crippling and often they don’t even get time off to look for and move into accommodation. The fact they pay for their own training ( the cost of the professional exams is ridiculous) and they also have a much reduced maintenance loan after the first four years. The whole thing is a mess .

I think the cost of exams, registration and car parking should be covered. It would make the salary go a lot further and
I'd say a starting salary of 35k rising roughly 5k a year until consultant level.

The problem with doctors pay and the public is that it's just not very transparent to people. They say they get a certain amount and then others say bu that's the basic, on top of that they get certain uplifts, etc. Peole can't figure out the actual truth and it makes doctors look shifty over their pay claims.

I remember seeing a doctor, a union representative talking about striking for improved wages, conditions, etc, being dismissive that the nhs should move to a 7 day week (forgetting the practicalities but thinking of it as the principle and something to aim for) and he pushed back against it strongly because doctors had children and they wouldn't be able to see them if they worked weekends as a normal shift. It sounded out of touch with how the rest of society lives really.

Why does everyone keep saying that junior doctors move every few months?? A friend of mine is a gP in training and has worked in the same place since graduating 🤷‍♀️

Starting salaries are just that . A start. And I hate how people keep remind us how long it takes to be a consult. I am pleased it takes so long. Making life and death sect, or serious medical decisions should require a lot of training. And most jobs are about 10 years before getting into senior positions.

I think the starting salary should be around 35k ish . But other than that , I don't support the strike

Why is it insulting if its true? though it is the attack line from the Govt too?

Hourly rate is hourly rate..... Plenty of low skilled jobs pay more than £14 ph.

BUT the point here is Dr's are leaving the NHS, so whatever you or i think, they are voting with their feet... putting up with poor conditions... getting experience and then leaving, same with pretty much all HCPs.

Junior Doc's work long hours because there isn't enough of them... how does your thinking get us more Doctors?

Hourly rate only matters if you're paid at an hourly rate. Doctors aren't, they're salaried.

I agree that they aren’t paid enough and they definitely deserve a rise. Do you mean FY1s should be paid the same as bottom band 7s? A bottom band 7 maybe an ANP in a role described as being allied to ST 3/4 level, so to state they should be sane as a bottom band 7 shows nurses with advanced practice skills little respect or recognition of what they do.

@wot3va a GP is not a junior doctor . They have completed their specialist training . Also they can only do GO training after doing their FY in hospitals where they would have had to move jobs every 4 months. They have done very well if they managed to stay in the same city, well done them but that is quite difficult to achieve especially if the specialty that you want to pursue has a scarcity of training places which is an increasing problem .

Actually because if the weird terms and different hourly rates paid according to shift patterns their pay is more akin to an hourly rate than a salary

I'd have more respect for doctors if they were just open and said "we're paid a lot already but we're greedy and want even more, otherwise we'll piss off to Australia and let you all die" instead of crying poverty and saying they're paid less than Pret workers which is just insulting people's intelligence. Doctors are intelligent people for the most part but they're treating the general public like idiots at the moment.

Thats irrelevant, there is still an hourly rate that they work for but either way....why is it "insulting" ?

fwiw i know a junior Doc, 2 years out from qualified, off sick with stress, she just cannot stomach how many people are dying needlessly, whilst waiting for treatment.
I counted 23 Ambulances waiting outside Derriford's AE dept last Monday afternoon.

She is now actively looking to work abroad, all that time and money to train her.... wasted.

Why do you think a Junior Doc today is worth 26% less to the nation than they were in 2005 ?

But they are not paid a lot in comparison to the amount of responsibility that they hold in their jobs. These people hold peoples lives in their hands/heads . Of course they should be paid more than people who make coffee .

If someone leaves Pret then they just go out and replace them, a couple of shifts of training and they are off. If a Doctor leaves you can’t just go and get them off the street, it takes at least 7 years to train a doctor . That’s why they should be paid well , because they are highly skilled and carry a huge responsibilities and are essentially a scarce resource.

@Tiredoftiers

I was thinking more of a brand new band 7 who definitely won't be operating at St 3/4 level which is why I said bottom. Not all band 7s are prescribes for a start

But then I think nurses should be getting much more than they are

I think it's interesting that on any higher earner thread lots of people will argue that they deserve their ridiculous wages because they work hard and will leave if they aren't paid market rate.

Yet when discussing public sector roles the argument is it doesn't matter how hard you work or what you do, just be grateful you have a job

I'm an administrator with an A level, level qualification in my type of admin. I earn £16 an hour in the private sector with a 5% pension contribution and £15.32 in the state sector with a 12% contribution to my pension. Its not particulatly stressful but I suppose my name is accountable for some things publicly. These are not life and death things.

So i think doctors pay is crap. I dont understand why we all argue that everyone should have crap pay all the time.

I do think twice as many doctors would make the job nicer than more pay but the two are linked. So an increase in pay plus more doctors is the answer.

£20 per hour sounds reasonable.

I think this is the wrong time to strike.

The timing undermines the very legitimate claims of nursing staff that could only dream of the salaries juniour doctors will eventually earn. The 35% salary increase will just frustrate a public who are fully aware of consultant salaries at a time of a cost of living crisis.

Doctors are high achievers from often quite financially stable middle class backgrounds who have made a choice to enter medicine instead of other lucrative careers. Medics put up with a few years of average pay and poor hours because they are effectively coupling training and practice similar to other professional graduates e.g. accountants and lawyers. At the time when the majority have families and settle down they will be financially set for life. The same does not apply to other staff.

junior doctors should like their consultant peers support pay increased for those that truly needs it in the NHS such as nurses and paramedics and not undermine their efforts through disingenuous claims of poverty and outrageous pay claims.

And who is going to fund these magical rises in pay? Not the Mumsnetters claiming ‘work doesn’t pay’ and encouraging everyone to claim as many benefits as they possibly can 🙄

Junior doctors deserve a pay rise, in line with inflation, and better working conditions. To compare their pay with that of pret workers is absolutely ridiculous, taking into account the career progression and extremely generous pension.