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 think working conditions are more important than salary. You could always employ more doctors without increasing salary and therefore essentially have a less onerous workload for a more basic salary. Simple economic theory though states that if you limit entry into profession salaries increase due to the scarcity of workers. Medics have benefited from this model for a number of decades.

The issue is
No matter what the public seem to believe junior doctors should be paid, most are deeply unhappy with conditions and pay. I’m 3.5 years out of medical school and of my cohort of 200, around 80 remain in the uk practicing medicine. Of these a small amount are in training programmes. Many are choosing not to enter training programmes, this gives greater flexibility to relocate to Australia in future. Many of these will also leave. My life would be so much better in most ways if I relocated my family to Australia (better pay, working conditions and respect) but my family are here and so I plod on.

Medics are intelligent highly skilled people. If you don’t offer at least a semi-competitive salary then frankly the difficulties of the job become less and less worth it. To give you some idea many of my colleagues have left to work in consulting in London. Firms offered them £70-80k as a STARTING salary with no experience in that field, purely because of their degree and transferable skills.

And so the issue is, if you want doctors to care for you in your old age. If you want to be able to get a Gp appointment, doctors need to be retained. There is 0 point training more when retention is so poor. The more leaving the worse conditions become and this further fuels the issue. I’m genuinely very very worried about the future of the nhs. Many current consultants and Gps are from a previous generation of no/low student debt and lower house prices. These need to be replaced by a new generation. At the moment I suspect within the next 10 years we are going to be very very short of doctors.

I think a 35k stating wage after 5/6 years of training seems fair.

However this should raise quickly... eg you are a junior doctor for a further 3 years (?) - after that, you have the qualifications/ experience to be a Dr. and get paid accordingly.

This could easily be linked to hours worked... eg 3 years full time or 6 years pt.

I also think a cap on weekly hours to 40 should be the norm to ensure patients safety.

@mids2019

You pu do realise the NHS has a massive recruitment and retention crisis?

It can't fill the vacant posts it has right now.

How do you propose we find lots more doctors?

@WaitingForEgg

Our local trust has lost 8 consultants across various specialities this year to retirement.

They have no applicants for the posts

@WaitingForEgg

As you state we are dealing with elite professionals and elite candidates. However do you realise that from the lens of the general public there may not be not enough to elicit huge public sympathy with the salaries you mention?

Medics can work abroad for more but how many other countries have an NHS like ours frees at the point of delivery? We could always revert to a private model of healthcare in this country where medics essentially become self employed or work in partnerships but that means a major change in political philosophy.

Medics are highly trained and take on huge responsibility but this doesn't negate the fact we have a publicly funded health care system and as easily salaries may be less than the private sector. You could argue teachers are highly trained and have the responsibility of pupils educational opportunities in their hands but they are not well paid compared to medics (and again striking).

I think relatively low starting salaries are the quid pro who for a compassionate health care system; do we want exchange that?

@Jill688 I love those stats, and what they want sounds very aciveable to me. Where did you get the figures from?

Frankly why would people bother

”junior” doctors train for 5-15 years
in many specialties there are NO consultants in the hospital at night. The hospital is held up by junior doctors.

There are rota gaps emerging all over the hospital. Thousands on exams, indemnity, car parking. One year on Christmas day we were given a satsuma to say thank you, but had a rota 50% covered.

“most are then consultants” not true now. No one wants to stay in training in the uk. I am a working class doctor who worked my arse off to get into medicine. I am first generation uni let alone medical school. My husband earns well and I am not greedy. However I’m so sick of the way we are treated, by the government and frankly the public opinion that I may well not stay. I’m here because my daughter is happy in school. My parents are elderly and here. But once I finish training I could easily move to Australia/Canada/USA. This is the story over and over again. You pay and train these doctors, and all of them are going to leave.

@Botw1

if there is recruitment crisis how do we squad the circle that is medics is a massively oversubscribed course? I am aware of applicants with superlative academic qualifications being rejected. The reason for the the recruitment crisis is not due to a lack of suitably qualified applicants for medicine but did to a shortage of training places partly due to the cost of training (and salary is a cost). It also benefits a profession to limit numbers as that increases salary in genral.

contrast the situation above with that for nursing where I feel there is a genuine recruitment crisis. People aren't queuing up to do nursing and busting their b@lls to get the grades necessary for courses as at a fundamental level the career isn't as well renumerated.

I actually completely agree with you. I think comparing our pay to say the USA is unfair. US healthcare is ridiculously expensive. I wouldn’t feel comfortable working somewhere that I have to deny life saving/prolonging treatment due to someone’s earnings. But 35% is NOT equating us to US pay. I would earn 4-5 x my pay in the US. What we need is something in between (similar to Australia wages).

@mids2019

Its 'oversubscribed' because the govt restrict places

A course being oversubscribed has no baring on the amount of doctors or consultants in the NHS

As you state we are dealing with elite professionals and elite candidates.

I think that's a thing of the past.I am not sure that medics are regarded as uniquely 'elite' any more

medical students also have to be taught by doctors in placements. There are not enough doctors to train more.

I looked it up on the BMA website. Doesn’t sound like an unreasonable ask at all to me.

Any doctors on here, us the graph on here correct? ( Upthread on page 2.) So, with allowances, in your first year you're on nearly £40k, and in your fifth year nearly £80k? If so, I think that's plenty although I do agree that having to move around the country is ridiculous and you should have your professional fees and costs covered. But those salaries do look pretty good to me. If you seriously want more than that, why go into medicine when, as another poster has stated, it is taxpayer funded and therefore has to have some limitations. Why not go into banking or similar ( without having done medicine at uni)? There must be plenty of applicants who believe the money is ok, and medicine, and helping society, is what they want to do. Why not leave it to them?

Because, like my mother in law, you can brag about your grandchild / child the medical student / doctor.

I am actively discouraging my children from doing it! There has been some presumption my eldest would go into medicine, but there is NOT a chance unless he is very very passionate about it (I think we killed any chance of that LOL)

Sorry, what is tax payer funded? The course? Then surely that makes every single degree out there tax payer funded..

Some of the public has become really disrespectful towards HCPs and medics. They think they should be in some kind of indentured servitude not realising that other western countries pay good wages and less workload.

The most important professions are the people who keep you alive , it's time they were respected or they will keep going abroad or refusing to train.

No this is not accurate

fy1 (first year post medical school) I was paid £33k to work 80 hours a week. I worked 48 hours of nights in a row, help multiple cardiac arrest bleeps, dealt with major haemorrhages, and commuted to 3 different hospitals. Fy2 I earnt £46k to also work 80 hours a week including covid wards. I was the only awake person for 60 patients post neurosurgery. St1 and st2 I’ve earnt on average £42-46k per year as my hours have been marginally lighter (56 per week). Still doing nights, weekends and multiple different hospitals.

on top of this I must pay £400 per year for gmc registration, £1600 in exam fees, £100 per month to park my car.

not to mention I have 2 children. Try organising childcare when you get a rota 2 weeks in advance. I have enormous love and respect for the nurses, hcas, porters, pharmacists etc that I work with. But I have £80,000 of student debt despite working while at medical school, and ultimately when you/your child/ your parent is sick, their life is ultimately in a doctors hands

Can I ask those who think the pay is ok

What do you do? And what do you earn?

The issue is, with all due respect what you think doesn’t matter a great deal. Doctors do not feel we are paid enough and are leaving. The reason conditions are so poor is because a rota of 10 doctors is staffed by 4. The hospital either cannot fill the gaps and so we have no choice but to work unsafely. The reason it cannot be filled is partly due to pay. At a time when mortgages, food, nursery is increasing, frankly the desire to work as a doctor for the nhs is just not there anymore for most.

I would love to know this too

Realistically the NHS are in a shit position because it's pay by banding. There's no way they could decide to give "Band 3" a pay rise without increasing the overall banding.

We all need more money after covid. I think though if money had been left out of it (I know it's a huge issue) and the working patterns had been put over as the main point because this would make a difference.

You think a Dr should be paid the same as someone who works in Pret ?
If you had a cardiac arrest would you be happy for someone from Pret to try and save your life?