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

@Newchapterbeckons Many people choose their direction then.

Yep

Are you always this angry? and quite frankly extremely rude.

Scottish Junior Docs had the same pay demands, they negotiated a lower figure PLUS a 3/4 year deal on pay restoration, SNP negotiated in good faith and during the strike.

The Tories have said Call off strikes and the threat of them or no talks.... hardly reasonable.

They make the decision to do a medical degree and apply at 17 years old.

You can’t negotiate with such an idiotic request of 35%. If I ordered you to go to the moon for your next pay packet could you do it? No. What’s the difference. Both stand no chance of success.

You have been set up to fail by left wing militants determined to destroy this country.

Where's the money coming from do we print more money will that help ease the situation with the doctors?

"No one goes to med school at 17!"

@Newchapterbeckons / you apply at the start of year 13. Most are still 17.

@Newchapterbeckons I filled in my university applications at 17

No, they will be doing the first year of A levels. Hopefully bright enough to tap into google ‘average starting salary of junior doctors’

Yes, and that is what junior medics in the rest if the uk are asking for. Pay restoration over a number of years.

Monopoly money 💰

Once again, the 35% is pay restoration, over many years.

Might help if you acquainted yourself of the facts of the dispute.

SNP sat down and negotiated during the strike and with the same 35% demand = no strikes in Scotland.

Of course 17yos choosing medicine are bright enough to realise its not perfect. Also the goal posts haven't been moved that substantially on the current crop of JD. If anything I don't think new entrants to the field appreciate how cushy the pension arrangements are compared to private sector.

How will we pay for a huge increase in staff from 1 in 17 to 1 in 11 and the 35% pay restoration?

I genuinely cannot get my head around the idea that anyone with a brain thinks £14/hr is an acceptable salary for a qualified doctor. I am not a doctor before anyone asks.

The Scottish government actually agreed to a 12.4% increase not 35%!

Feels like the whole career structure for doctors is really messed up. Large rewards for the consultants (well the ones that do private work anyway) but not for the others.

@Newchapterbeckons People who are JDs today might have done that search 10 or 15 years ago. Prospects looked very different then!

I had a lot of sympathy for doctors striking until I read this thread. How can consultants earning almost 100k say they can’t afford to live and rely on their husbands earnings. Utterly ridiculous.

Strangely, its not Monopoly money when Sunak & Hunt hands out £21billion in tax cuts.

He could have handed out a little less and settled this strike.

Political decision not too.

@Newchapterbeckons How do you think negotiations work?

And most lawyers have pretty healthy pension pots in my experience as its tax effecient to contribute to your pension

In a partnership, yes. Those of us us in-house tend to struggles more. My DH’s NHS pension is insanely good, let’s hope he doesn’t divorce me in the next 20 years!

@ZenNudist the problem is that they are doing something else. Not enough people are becoming (or remaining) NHS doctors because there are other more appealing career paths for intelligent, educated people. So they're leaving the profession or choosing other careers in the first place. And we have a shortage of doctors, which will get worse unless something is done.

i very much doubt it! What have they been doing for the last fifteen years? Taking gap years in abundance? It doesn’t take 15 years to qualify for ffs!

They work by being realistic.