Struggling to make ends meet as a junior doctor. AIBU?

[HK3444]

Struggling to make ends meet. Rent has gone up, food bills are going up and struggling to support my kids.

I’m someone worked really hard through medical school, it felt like endless exams and accumulated student debt with the hope that I’d be able to support my family comfortably at the end of the degree and but also feel job satisfaction bettering the health of others.

Not sure what this was all for… can’t believe I’m in this situation as a doctor

If doctors get a 35% ride than the rest of the NGS deserves likewise.

Are you comparing like with like? It sounds like you trained straight from school and qualified before family responsibilities. OP has not been back with any more details of her circumstances but it sounds like she started when she was older. From what I’ve gleaned from what information she did provide, her AIBU should have been “struggling to make ends meet as a single mother of 2 despite being a newly qualified junior doctor’.

I only get 130£ London premium per month over working elsewhere in a country. No chance of that covering the additional costs of London renting. It doesn't even cover my commute train fares in

YANBU OP! Some of the comments on here are so disheartening and clearly all made by those who don't work in the sector. The OP doesn't need to 'know her privilege' - she needs fucking paid properly for the job she does. The Government make a CHOICE not to pay public sector workers well. They seem to find billions to pay their mates for dodgy contracts. And the rest.

The bottom line is this.

If the junior doctors had any true intention whatsoever of reaching a resolution, they would lower their demands so that a deal could be brokered, and more patients could be saved.

The very fact that they persist with such militancy and are trying to rinse the public for an unaffordable 35% pay rise is fucking outrageous.

I hope the government brings in laws to prevent this strike action in the future.

They are an angry, grasping mob calling for ‘restoration’ it is beyond a joke, and they are killing the very people they are supposed to be caring for!!!

Why do you need to pay for London rent if you are commuting in!

@Newchapterbeckons I think you are projecting.

Nope, just observing the disgraceful annihilation of a once revered profession.

I hear you op. I unfortunately have been in and out of hospital with my dd the last few years with long stays. The amount of stress, inflexibility( which will cause additional costs ), hideous working conditions and responsibility you have to manage deserves pay that recognises this. My husband works in a non managerial role in IT as a developer and gets more than most junior doctors.

What really riles me is the massive increase very highly paid consultants who top up with private work got. What aren’t those on the coal face who are doing the dirty work getting similar? Phones Tory government who only reward the highest paid- and their friends of course.

I couldn’t be a doctor or nurse in a million years but I need them. Doctors need to be paid a wage that recognise what they do for a reason. Very few of us can do it.

How much do junior doctors earn?

Agreed so a 15 % pay increase should do it, not a 35% ransom. Have you EVER heard of anyone, anywhere demanding such a high increase from the public purse?

We all agree an increase is fair, but we can not afford their pay demands currently.

https://www.bma.org.uk/media/5504/bma-junior-doctors-contracts-pay-tables-apr-2022-2023.pdf

Part of the NHS problem is that they are top-heavy with 'management'. Most people who have been through the hospital system as patients and many of those who work at the sharp end in the NHS hold the view that 'management' couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery.

I agree. People say that many others are also struggling in the beginning of their career, but to me the level of responsibility junior doctors have isn’t really comparable to most other careers. That, plus the long hours.

The BMA has always been a morally bankrupt organisation - look into its history when it comes to when the NHS was first formed and then its refusal to allow Jewish doctors to come here fleeing nazi persecution . The strikes are no different

But a lot of those people do not have to pay thousands of pounds for nexessary exams and dont have the level of responsibility doctors do. Most graduates in any professions do not start having to do what juniors doctors do, really.

What’s your annual salary and your average monthly take home pay after tax etc but also after overtime etc?

What are your monthly outgoings? If you’re struggling to make ends meet there must be areas you can cut down on spending? It doesn’t make sense for a doctor to be struggling, assuming you’re not an F1/F2 (in which case you are right at beginning of career, really still training and a low salary is to be expected) you’ll be earning above national average way, certainly a lot more than I earn as a teacher, presumably you’re not living within your means?

You do know that most areas around London reflect the fact they are close, so unless you commute 3 hours one way, the rent is still pretty expensive regardlesss if it is outside London.

London is big... Cheaper bits not necessarily close to where you work...

My 2 zone annual ticket was £800 20 years ago, suspect rather more now!

If they even exist…

Travelling across London is not the same as ‘commuting in’ look at the words used. Commuting in suggests they live outside!

@CecilyP I’m not sure your point: arguably my situation is the best possible one. Didn’t have children while at med school but had them during my higher specialist training as otherwise it would have been too late.

I am still struggling. If the OP started her training later in life it will be harder for her.

so then she is even less U

I never understand with medicine, the pay is abysmal at the start but it gets insanely high. Ive got a load of dr friends and by late 30s they all seem to make consultant or partner in a gp practice and their earnings rocket, its private schools and huge houses all the way.

Maybe they need to lower the earnings of senior consultants a bit to pay more to the doctors & nurses lower in the payscale. Often its the "junior" doctors doing all the worst a&e shifts etc.

@Newchapterbeckons Doctors are as a group highly intelligent people with very strong maths skills. They are also people with families to feed. Idealism only goes so far. If there is enough disincentive to leave medicine and go into banking, they will.

The 1950s Doc Martin village GP who operates too and earns big bucks no longer exists. You're living in the past. You are correct that the profession is being annihilated but it's by the government not by the doctors. Your outrage is matched by the mass exodus of staff to sunnier climes and futures.