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 you need to calm down you'll do yourself a mischief, and you don't want to end up in hospital at the hands of those greedy horrible doctors!

Clapping is totally meaningless bullshit. Most of the Tory MPs clapped at the same time as they were totally failing to protect NHS workers with proper PPE.

What matters is supporting real change to working conditions, which is what they’re striking for.

I responded to your post stating no one gets 13% and now you're back on the 35%.

I did work extremely hard for it, but nothing like what a doctor has to deal with. I also have not been on basically static pay for the several years prior because of NHS pay freezes. I'm very grateful for my job, but equally I can see why doctors, who are likely also grateful for what they have, deserve to be paid an amount that reflects the responsibility and stress they have.

I'm going to ask you again. What facts do you have to back up literally any of your views on this? Because you have a lot but never answer that.

You are right I am furious.
Absolutely furious.

Six days of strikes will result in many unnecessary deaths and the delays will kill people. It feels deeply unethical, especially in an industry that is supposed to protect and care for the lives of patients. A service that is paramount.

If it was one or two days maybe it wouldn’t have infuriated me in the way it has. It is also the futility of the action, because ultimately they could strike for a 100 days and it still won’t result in success because the pay demand is much too high.

Absolutely. The patients I see in central London often are at the ‘bottom’ of the social scale. They have little social support, poor health and often little money and shoddy housing. I feel we can make a genuine difference to their lives if we try and take a holistic approach.

I have never been motivated by money. Of course I need enough to live on and I think junior doctors are up against a cost-of-living crisis that I did not experience at their age and stage. My peers are all on much higher incomes as they have city jobs. I still think I have the ‘better’ job overall and don’t regret my choice. It is a privilege for me to be a doctor.

I do think a lot of the other things around trainee doctors’ conditions need to be changed. In particular, the lack of control over their rotas and the insufficient notice and inflexibility.

Your pay rise is not linked to taxes so if you are offering up 35% pay restoration for public sector you’ll need to say where from

Especially since the number of staff will increase year on year at the same time

Not sure if you’re being dense or deliberately obtuse but surely you can see how doctors face higher costs just to be able to show up and do their jobs?

I can take public transport to work because it runs during the hours I have to be there. A doctor can’t so is obliged to run a car.
And then pay for the privilege of parking it once they get to work.

Everyone I know who works in a location where they have to drive gets free parking at their office

I’m not sure how you think you are able to form any sort of persuasive argument about the strikes when you can’t even grasp the most basic points of it.

BTW, I’m not a doctor. I work in finance. But we have been recruiting lots of ex-doctors to work in our health tech divisions, where they get regular hours and higher pay. No ‘god complex’, just smart people looking to be fairly paid for their work.

Maybe let it sink in that we are able to tempt experienced doctors to leave the profession when you’re next whinging about not being able to get a GP appointment, or complaining about the waiting times for a specialist referral

Most professionals including healthcare professionals didn't have to pay university tuition fees for more than four years. Just because your daughter did it doesn't mean everyone else has to. It's not a race to the bottom.

The placards with £14 an hour on shocked me. I didn't realise they were paid less than newly qualified nurses. I support a pay increase. People are saying 35% is ridiculous. Firefighters on £17k fought for £35k in 2002. It was how they got their payrise. My next door neighbour died in a fire during those strikes. We need firefighters and we need doctors. They should be paid more than bankers who sit on their arses counting money for rich people. Those angry that doctors expect to be paid to do their job and expecting them to show up and work regardless of pay and conditions are the entitled ones.

No, but I pay taxes and would much rather they were used to fund doctors salaries, decent education etc than a lot of the stuff they are used for (HS2 comes to mind, the sheer amount of money spent on the coronation....to name just a couple).

The country is utterly broken and needs sorting out.

I completely agree that working hours and conditions must be improved for JD.

Pay must be increased, and continue to be increased for JD. The number needs to be realistic but most people support a reasonable pay rise.

We need more med school places in the U.K. too many highly educated kids are missing out and could make an excellent contribution.

My issue is the sheer size of the pay demand - which means it will never be agreed by any government regardless of political colour.

And nearly a whole week of strikes in the middle of winter which looks designed to cause maximum pain and suffering to the patients.

I applaud your work and decisions and I hope your work will continue to be fulfilling and rewarding. My life’s work is along similar lines not the same industry.

As another qualified medical professional I don't necessarily think the 'pay' itself is the issue. I think the ridiculous hours/work for the pay is the issue.

I would be happy to make that amount of money in general (more than I have made in any other job including palliative home care which has included many of the same responsibilities).

However I have a young family and I simply can not and will not drop everything to give my whole life to working the cause (and I think anything that demands that much work should be compensated better, but even with more money it STILL wouldn't be practical to me).

Why won't it be successful if a few days of strikes will apparently lead to deaths? I doubt that they are expecting 35% but if they asked for less they would get much less.

Junior doctors have already studied for many years and are already qualified doctors by F1 so your graduate analogy is inaccurate. Most graduates are just starting their training. Physicians Associates haven't done five minimum years of med school are paid signifcantly higher than F1 and F2's on 9-5 contracts and with far less qualification and training. Can you explain that to me as I would love to understand? And there is the small matter of responsibility for life or death situations 'even' as F1s. Hardly your standard graduate position.

HS2 comes up often but it would have taken a huge amount of lorries off the road. Not bad for a green aim. But it was too expensive in the end particularly after Covid spending so probably right to scrap

Coronation isn’t much comparatively and helps with tourism. I don’t want taxes for healthcare and nothing celebratory

The NHS is a behemoth, 1 in 11 employees by 2036 that is staggering don’t you think?

How do we deal with that plus the 35%?

Then why do doctors think they are such a special case and more deserving than any other sector?

I'm sure this has been raised before on this thread - I'm not bored enough to read through 13 pages - but the pay seems completely fine to me:

https://www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pay/junior-doctors-pay-scales/pay-scales-for-junior-doctors-in-england

we don't. we just think that anyone deciding to go into a vocation which they alreday knew (like everyone else) was poorly paid, then endlessley striking for more money is perhaps part of the problem..

People going into medicine (or any other highly regulated professional career) would have expected that pay increases would occur roughly in line with inflation/cost of living. They have not.

Try been a carer with no chance of ever making enough money.
So many people doing essential jobs in the same situation but they never get a mention.

Starting salary.

Ask a consultant how may thousands they get for half a day at a private place.

What don't people get about salary progression??

They need to get their arses back to work.

Exactly this

HS2 is massively over budget and much of it has been scrapped. Its tax payers money that has just been chucked away.

How about we don't pay the MPs the ridiculous amounts they get? Or we look at ways to not pay the pharmaceutical companies hundreds of millions for essential life saving drugs? Or we don't make uni fees so massive, and yet the government (and therefore tax payer) fund them and the majority don't get paid back?

It's not just the NHS that's broken. But if everything worked properly (and not as a way to put money in the top 1%s pockets), we wouldn't be here.

I have no solutions. But that doesn't mean that the doctors don't deserve what they're asking for and that solutions shouldn't be looked for.

Can I ask who in gods name is advising you re the pay demands and longevity of the strikes? Because they need to be struck off.

They certainly should never take a job in hostage negotiation.

It is pitiful. You can go in with a reasonable amount - let’s say 20% pay demand and then you still have a degree of public support.

You choose 2/3 day strikes instead of six so you minimise the death count. You set ‘realistic’ goals so it’s possible to achieve a settlement and not evoke hellfire amongst the JDs and set them up to fail.

At the moment you have lost public support altogether. You are killing innocent patients by the day and you are no closer and never will be to the magical number of 35%

You are being staggeringly mismanaged and poorly advised by some militant union leaders that are hellbent on ruining this country, and your professional credibility.

Stop being used as union fodder for goodness sake.

Most importantly
Stop patients being used as human union fodder. You are going to have blood on your hands this week.

Call it off. Start again with a realistic target.

Lol. Yabvu. You earn well over the national average already and will be on track to to earn £80-£100k in 5 years or even less. You are not even obligated to stay working in the NHS even though all your ongoing training is subsidised by the taxpayer. People on far, far less than you have to make it work without throwing their toys out.