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

The pay increase would be easily afforded if the state pension changed back to matching inflation, rather than the triple-lock.

We could then afford to pay all our public sector properly

Oh what a surprise op hasn’t returned…..
Perhaps she is tied up at LHQ.

Midwife here who fully supports the strikes.

Just because we got absolutely shafted by the agenda for change pay deal doesn't mean the doctors should be shafted too.

I think a lot of people just don't understand that getting up to consultant level and the good salary isn't a simple, linear process. To follow the path the media likes to say doctors do then you have to pass all your examples first time get accepted in to speciality training (which overall does not have as many spaces as there are doctors) and keep passing each exam first time and then there has to be a consultant job (again not enough of those) for which you must apply and be successful. Oh and be full time so the way through.

The reality is that many are less than full time because otherwise you can't manage childcare or other responsibilities in your life, many haver to retake exams because they are fucking hard. Many don't get accepted in to speciality training for a while...... The "junior" doctors can spend many, many years at really very low grades and not because they are rubbish doctors. You also have to remember that even for consultants there are additional costs for them. For example when on call they either need to sleep on site or live so close to the hospital they can get there in under 30min. That includes getting out of bed, dressed etc. MPs who keep getting pay rises can claim all manner of expenses for second homes and live where they want but consultants either get limited choice on where to live, often being restricted to expensive areas, or spend on calls in a rubbish hospital on call room. And no, they won't be able to expense anything related to not being at home.

Agenda for change sucks too and unless you actively want to leave clinical behind and go in to the strategic side then you hit a career progression and pay rise wall. Many of us will never pay off student finance etc so it is a career long "tax" for the privilege of being under resourced and under staffed. I'm band 7 and annually I have around £12 00 more added to my loan balance in interest than I actually pay off. I'm at the bottom of the party scale and not full time so it will change but even at the top of the full time pay scale I don't think I'll actually even equal the interest.

But junior doctors should be paid enough to live on. That’s just a basic necessity. We need doctors, we need to pay them enough. Whether or not OP is ‘shocked’ is irrelevant, the fundamental issue is wages are too low.

Some really strange posts on here. It’s in all our interests to have a
medical structure which works and which we are all cared for. We all know it’s not working at the moment. And one of the reason for this is that “junior” doctors are not paid anything like they have been previously because of inflation.

But these are the people who care for us when we have an accident- and it’s not good enough for them or for us.

I was in A and E on Xmas night. Efficient structure but just not enough doctors working. Had to wait for 6 hours with my son. Meanwhile his pain was so bad they had to dose him with morphine! People falling off wheelchairs. Prisoners arriving in handcuffs. We need more people working in the health service and we need to pay adequate wages so there is some desire to stay in the UK and make the job rewarding and not just demoralising. All of us can agree on that surely? The UK is a rich country, of course we can afford it- it’s a matter of choice and we need to choose to invest in the right places.

I’m sorry but your first comment is ridiculous. So it should be higher! The lowest bands of the civil service aren’t dealing with your health! Jesus.

But I agree, pay rises are needed across the public sector.

This is such a helpful and informative post, thank you. The point about student loans being a lifelong tax is such a valid one, it’s completely outrageous when we so badly need the jobs you do.

I am genuine but of course cannot prove that.

I think 35% is unrealistic. They need to compromise on a lower figure and see if they can negotiate some better conditions instead.

I think a lot of it is also about feeling valued. Whilst I am from the days of doing 56h shifts (and have flashbacks of some of those terrible oncalls) and then having to do two days work and then another 48h shift I did feel valued as a doctor. And there was hope that things would get easier. I think that has changed now.

Incredible you cannot see that as "Junior" Doctors leave the NHS, there will be less senior Doc's and Consultants in the future.

What then for the NHS ? and your worries over safe staffing.

Bottom line is they have had an around 35% drop in real terms wages and they asking for thing, over years, to be restored.

What jumps out from your post is if they are sooo crap at their jobs, how come the NHS is crying out for them to stop their strike and 100s of 1000s of appointments will be cancelled/rearranged? odd that.

imho the entire NHS staff should just walk out indefinitely until this govt restores pay, attracts uk citizens into healthcare and stops taking AHP's from very poor dev countries.

Wait until you are a consultant to have a family? At what age do you think Junior Doctors ( ridiculous title after maybe 15 years of study and training) become consultants? Pushing 40 maybe, if things fall into place for them. When the most fertile years are past for many.

I can't walk past this post. Thankyou for choosing a career that saves lives. I would be very very happy to pay more tax in order to ensure you get paid appropriately for the work you do and the immense responsibility that comes with.

Plenty of private sector companies will give good benefits, the pension isn't that great either.

But as i said, JD's are leaving, often to work abroad, this needs to be stemmed or you wont have a NHS to work in.

35% is likely unrealistic and compromise needs to happen. However, I believe pay restoration for doctors would cost less than abolishing inheritance tax which the government seems to think of an entirely reasonable thing to consider. Priorities and all that.

The issue is that the government appears to have made a decision to completely ignore the turmoil in the NHS and basically wait it out. I hope the doctors have the tenacity to hang on in there.

Radiographer here and I fully support the doctors strike . Underpaid and undervalued the government must be mad to think it can continue. My pay and conditions , even under crappy agenda for change , are fairer than theirs

28k/year is pretty substantial I would have thought tbh. Not sure why you feel you should get more as a starter salary.

Honestly, some of these posts. All “junior doctors pleading poverty”. I really do give up. Why is it so difficult to acknowledge that junior doctors are highly skilled and educated people doing an incredibly difficult job.
At their level of qualification they should earn far more. Period. And yes they should earn more than a vast swathe of careers. Simply because of the level of training and investment required to qualify. As others have said, if you want to retain and attract these essential skills you must find a way of making being a doctor and attractive career path. Right now, it isn’t.

@jasflowers I didn't say they were crap at their jobs. They're new to their specialities, I wouldn't expect them to know what they're doing. Medicine is such a vast subject that it's not possible for someone who's done a general medicine course to know everything about every specialty. You misunderstood me, it wasn't a criticism of them, but when you're thrown into a new area after just qualifying, don't except to be paid a super high rate. Just under 30k is a really decent salary for a newly qualified person. Yes in real terms they've had a pay cut but so has everybody. It's unsustainable and completely unrealistic to expect it to be fully restored. Especially when this is clearly a newly qualified person who went into the training with an advertised salary of substantially less. What did they think was going to happen when they qualified...

We would have a resolution by now if the pay demand had been realistic.

So you are on a minimum FTE of £93,666, a take home monthly of around 4k and that all goes on childcare? Who is your nanny, Mary Poppins?

Are you not reading the thread? This isn't about starter salaries. This is about people who are decades into a challenging and highly skilled career. Junior does not mean freshly qualified.

The only potentially controversial thing I would say re the strikes is that they are each going on for too long now. I think it genuinely could compromise patient care. Trusts are spending a fortune on locum cover and consultants are exhausted.

It’s a difficult one. I know the strikes need to have an impact but perhaps more strikes but lasting less long each might be a ‘better’ way. This six day one worries me. What next?

And also they are now unaffordable for many. My junior told me that the only reason they can afford to go on strike is that his wife is a city lawyer. It’s a huge chunk out of the monthly pay. Despite the hardship funds, most striking juniors are getting significant pay cuts this month. It’s a difficult one.

Neither are the NHS - they’re a joke.

Lowest band CS do jobs like being the consular officer etc which are actually crucial jobs.

But Junior Docs are not just the newly qualified are they? they are campaigning for pay increases for more experienced Doc's too, not just the new starters.

Yes i do think under 30k is a crap starting salary.

Very true many workers have had real terms pay cuts, does that make it all ok then? the Doctors who have been on TV have ALL said they are willing to negotiate, will compromise on the 35% and do not expect pay to be restored in a single year.

Scottish Dr's settled for far less and their govt negotiated during strike action, so why can't the Tories? they did for the courts strikes, so its a choice they've made as they simply don't care about the NHS.