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

I fully support the action Junior Doctors are taking. When fully trained to enable specialist training, becoming a GP for example, I can only add those who do agency out of hours can earn a fortune. My friend does this and ok she gets fed up of night duty but she can pick and choose her shifts, has a great relationship with a Doctor who does the same and they're saving for the future. It's tough at the start but the potential for earning is way beyond the average professional. I say this because I think its wrong to put young people off entering the profession. Junior Doctors deserve more respect by way of remuneration and I hope they are successful.

OP have you considered quitting and starting a business as a professional dog walker?

Are compulsory fees not deductable on your tax return?

And if you are really claiming the lie that hospital cleaners are paid more than doctors, then quit your job and become a cleaner.
Except you will not as you know it is a lie.

Agree . Drs get paid so badly considering how hard they have worked to get to medical school and qualify,antisocial hours and dealing with all the general public shit ! I have a wonderful hard working son who deservingly is earning £45 k at age of 22 . He did bloody well to get his job ,gets a free breakfast and lunch cooked by a chef and has an amazing view from the office over Westminster Abbey and the Thames…a different world and good for him ...but !!

This!
And the fact that leave is refused because there are not enough staff, Junior Drs have to sort their own swaps to take time off for a honeymoon (one day allowed for the wedding - whoppee), people are so burned out by staying late (and not being able to claim extra time) that they end up leaving ....

A career forged in life and death decisions. Most people on the waiting list you’ve referred to won’t have to take on anywhere near that sort of responsibility - a responsibility which doesn’t get left on the desk when the clock strikes 5pm. OP’s career is valuable and junior doctors are now asking for that rewarding part you refer to - emotionally rewarding doesn’t pay the bills and fiscal renumeration should reflect the demands of the job. That part doesn’t only relate to those medics and nurses.

@TriciaA1991 Except doctors are not paid less than hospital cleaners.

Surprisingly lots jobs where £14 an hour is the going rate so to speak.

TBF you're probably in your 20s? Large pay comes with experience. Like with any job. I don't think anyone should expect to be paid big bucks until they're earnt their stripes so to speak?

I think if you can't manage on £30k you probably need a lesson in some budgeting surely? Or if it's because of high childcare costs, surely you factored that in before having kids?

As for the person who wrote GP wasn't rolling in it..seriously..come on.

The starting salary is not that bad if you were working a reasonable amount of hours in a system that was less over stretched. It's the amount of hours and pressure I have real sympathy over. Far beyond what anyone should cope with. The same for nurses. If the focus was more on patient care I think people would be more supportive if the focus of the strikes was on patient care and working conditions rather than pay.

Have you got a spouse/partner? I think that it’s almost impossible to pay everything alone, especially with small children.

can you change the kind of work you do to make more money?

Did I see that the GP.eligible for UC deleted her post when people asked what her full time salary equivalent was, how many hours she works and whether her husband's salary takes her above the 14k or so limit for UC top up for a single person 🤔

Oh no, still here, can you elaborate on fte salary and contracted hours?

Just curious, if someone goes through the stages of medical training at the “textbook”
ages, what would the age range be for being a junior doctor?

Surely this is an important point.

If you dedicate the majority of your time to a profession that causes such emotional stress and pressure than surely you shouldn’t have to suffer financial emotional stress and pressure too…

YABU

About 23-30

YANBU but must be a bit silly posting this on MN, people here are absolutely feral about this issue

Yes, but that doesn't mean they vanish. It still costs you 80%

Agree exactly. Money alone isn't the answer. No one should be flogged and overworked. Sadly some professions see this as a 'right of passage'.

Hardly an exodus of doctors... the number of licensed doctors increased in 2022, with 23,838 joining and 11,319 leaving. About 350 doctors per year have left the NHS to go to Australia in the last 8 years. 33,000 hospital doctors in the UK are foreign-born/qualified (35%), 30% of all Doctors in Australia are born/qualified abroad.

24-38. Some training schemes are longer than others. GPs could finish in 5 years, so fully trained GP by 29.

Consultants might finish in 10 years (so consultant by 34), but many specialties expect a PhD, or subspecialty training (mine does). I was a consultant at 38, and couldn’t have finished any faster than 37 - there are many senior trainees in their 40s who have been in full time training the whole way through.

It also depends so much on location.

MNetters post from all over the UK and we argue over what constitutes a ‘decent salary’ as though a £30k salary is the same if living in central London or Scunthorpe 😂

I see the media has done what it set I it to do. So many people listening to them and blaming the doctors for things the government are causing.
so let’s just carry on loosing all our doctors. Then when they can’t get appointments because there are less doctors than now they’ll be moaning about that.
yanbu fully support the strikes, we should be investing far far more in our health professionals!

@LorlieS’s post and another that mentioned drs “could be earning megabucks in finance” stuck out to me. Accounting, like medicine it seems from this thread, is another field in which pay scales and remuneration structures have changed over time and the reality for a lot of people now is different to traditional expectations.

When I started training 15 years ago my salary was around 15% lower than graduates at my firm start on now but the pay increases I received on each qualification/ promotion milestone were much steeper. When I passed my chartership my salary went up 52%, it’s now more like a 20% increase on qualification as they start on a higher salary in year one and receive bigger increases through each year of training, with the typical qualified salary not being much higher than it was 10 years ago.

Once qualified, people now get promoted through grades more easily and salaries reflect this. A senior manager salary now is what a good manager salary was a few years back.

I agree with the previous poster who mentioned there being a difference between actually not being able to feed yourself/ pay your rent and struggling to afford the standard of living you’ve committed yourself to/ that you’d expect for yourself given your career stage. Ok accountants, engineers etc don’t train for as long as drs and don’t have the same responsibilities but I suspect you’d find a lot of people recently qualified in these professions feeling similar to the OP.

It’s a sad state of affairs at the moment, feels like the majority of people are running to stand still/ slide backwards. What were once potentially lucrative career paths feel less so now.