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

No, the U.K. isn’t a rich country. Thats the problem.

You don't know them then. You have an impression of them. If you had a significant other who worked in the NHS you wouldn't speak like this, that's for certain. I would hazard a guess that the only doctors you know are the ones you see on TV.

Someone upthread asked why train drivera get paid so much more at the start of their careera.

Well being a trIn driver is a skilled and responsible job that involves anti social hours, so should be well renumerated.

But an uncomfortable answer for those of us who support publically owned services is a lot of it is down to privatisation of BR. After privatisation different train operating companies competed for skilled and well qualified drivers - resulting in higher wages for drivers.

This is also why doctors in the US generally get paid more.

The simple truth is if you have a virtial monopoly employer, like the NHS, there is going to be little incentive for it to compete on wages to attract and retain staff. A private healthcare system may well actually benefit healthcare staff in pure wage growth terms. Which is why I assume the BMA and many doctors opposed the founding of the NHS in the first place.

This is not, by the way, a justification from me to privatise the NHS.

I have said that patients expect first class care, they don’t get it as staff are underpaid and are run ragged. Read the post properly.

The future is that some of the functions of doctors will be taken over by AI. Therefore fewer doctors will be needed.

This

The NHS do deal with your health, no matter how bad you think they are, they just do. It’s facts.

I know - I work for the CS. You don’t need to tell me 👍 But the work that’s done in the CS is completely different to a JD role and doesn’t require the years of learning and sacrifice. So no, I do not think the lowest bands of the CS should paid the same as a JD.

However, yes, I do agree the whole public sector pay needs reform. The CS “pay rises” haven’t actually been pay rises in many, many years and they’re going to miss out on a lot of talent that’s desperately needed because of it.

It's not. We've been conditioned in this country to think that's a good wage. When your average house price is about 10 times that it isn't. It would be a decent wage if you maybe did an unskilled job but not for a doctor starting out after years of training. The race to the bottom in our country really is pathetic.

No, the U.K. isn’t a rich country. Thats the problem

Nonsense! we just dont tax enough (the wealthy) the UK is way below the OECD average, so 10% below the French (who has the best Health service?)

We could tax unearned income more, there is 25bn right there, surely you noticed that Sunaks overall tax rate on income is 22%? most on here pay around 34%.

FTSE CEOs earn 119x more than the average uk workers wage, plenty of money in the UK, just very badly distributed.

Agree. I’m always really curious when people espouse that poster’s view as to how much their rent/mortgage is, and if they’re being topped up with child benefit etc.

The lowest bands of the civil service aren’t dealing with your health! Jesus
Do they need 3 As at A levels to even be considered for training?

Do they have to take entry exam tests that expect you to score in the 90% to even be considered?

Do they have to undertake strident interviews to even hope for a training place?

Do they have to train for 5 years taking non stop exams, go to different areas miles away for placements...

And that's only a small flavour of what Junior Doctors have to go through to even get to that entry level income.

Ultimately, your advice is to forget about medicine and take the much much easier route into the civil service. And then you can join all those who will moan that the NHS is even more understaffed and it takes 5 years to see a consultant or pay 4 times privately to see one of the rare doctor that remains practicing privately.

Your post is so insulting to the profession.

Working on the NHS alongside medics I can assure you a large number retire well before 60. We have 1 or 2 working into their 70s but most are out earlier, they get their pension then they do wee bits of bank work, locum work and private work and earn more that way so the consultant salary at top end is still an underestimate of what a consultant can and frequently does take home

Or they could simply bring a considered, measured proportionate salary request to the table? One that could actually be agreed. Rather than some deranged activist type screaming at the public for more and more pay that is totally unachievable. Holding a gun to the head of dying patients heads is deeply, deeply unethical.

There is something distinctly immoral about these strikes, because the demands are ludicrously, impossibly high.

Which indicates to me that there is no INTENTION on a settled negotiation, at all. So it leads me to believe this is political - because if you are genuinely interested in increased pay and better conditions your end game settlement at least needs to be achievable.
No government of any colour can agree to these unholy ransoms Paris.

And the ONLY ones suffering now are the injured and dying patients, which to me, feels utterly repellent and immoral.

You could say that about any job. Shall we all stop working and wait for AI to take over in 20 years time.

Excuse me ?! I think you need to learn how to fucking read. I was sticking up for the JDs!!!!!! I was saying OF COURSE JD DESERVE TO BE PAID MORE.

@Teateaandmoretea
The future is that some of the functions of doctors will be taken over by AI. Therefore fewer doctors will be needed

Really? patient health care is people centred, its unlikely AI will reduce the need for Doctors and as we are so short of them....
Healthcare also evolves, new treatments etc requiring more highly trained staff inc Doctors.

It isn’t just about income though is it it’s also about the huge debt that we racked up during Covid.

The UK is a rich country with lots of poor people in it. The many resources are poorly used and allocated.

@Newchapterbeckons But all ok for the Govt to hold a gun to dying patients heads?

The tories have offered 3% for this year and nothing on longer term pay increases.

There will still be patient care provided by the doctors who remain. I didn’t say that doctors would be entirely taken over by AI. But diagnostic work, a lot of primary care can arguably be done better by AI.

From April last year. John Burn-Murdoch of the FT -

"Critics of striking medics argue that everyone is suffering at the moment. But doctors & nurses have had it worse.

Recent inflation has taken the average UK worker’s real wages 2.5% below their 2009 level, but earnings are down 13% for nurses and 24% (!) for junior doctors."

"For some groups in particular, the numbers are eye-watering.

Specialty registrars junior doctors about 5-10 years into their professional career would be earning £20,000 more per year today if pay had kept up with inflation."

"The result is that highly skilled and expensively trained medical professionals are slipping down the UK’s income distribution, while the list of countries where they could earn more grows by the year."

From this thread.
x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1651901194934054914?s=46&t=Uw4lJNwxFZFnX0Xs3doHYg

But let's abolish inheritance tax.

& @vivainsomnia there are actually a lot of specialist roles within the CS that DO require training, degrees and ongoing specialist knowledge - so maybe try to avoid being condescending to one profession when you clearly don’t know half of the roles within the CS. It’s not all HMRC call centres.

OP people can tell you YABU//YANBU all they want but at the end of the day most will only give a shit when so many doctors have left the profession/left the country that the NHS is at absolute breaking point. The warning signs have been there for ages but nobody is genuinely paying attention

It's easy for people to self-righteously lecture about the morals of striking etc but they forget that it's human beings working on that frontline with their own lives/families/problems/bills. They ultimately have a choice whether to carry on getting up and going to work on a sinking ship. To many, striking is probably seen as the least destructive option and a last chance to try and keep the system afloat

Do what you need to OP. Most people aren't going to have a balanced opinion about your actions. They will only care when the inevitable happens and the NHS becomes privatised. This will likely be financially devastating for most working families but I suspect we'll all have to figure that out the hard way

Yanbu. I work for a “big 4” firm. I was speaking to a junior colleague who confided she has to skip meals. As a management consultant she is probably on £55k. The prospect of promotion is incredibly unlikely this year. Money does not go far as a single person in London.

What a horrible comment showing total lack of any understanding