Reasonable to expect a surgeon to do this?

[Beeturpot]

ex dh is a surgeon. He became a consultant after we separated. I did all drop offs etc and was called in all emergencies and if dc needed collecting etc. He said he couldn’t leave if in work as it wasn’t the sort of job that allowed it.

I have recently been promoted. I’m feeling resentful that I am doing all the running around for dc. They live with me. Is he right that this is too difficult for him? He claims to start work by 8am and often leaves late. I don’t know anyone in his area of work and i don’t know if he’s taking the piss. He does do his share at weekends. Just feeling fed up.

I’m a year 5 consultant. Take home pay is more like £5K after deductions. We also spend a huge amount on courses, professional subscriptions , petrol ( driving to outreach). It is a bugger to claim these things back too!

Not a man. Not stuck in the 1950’s. Not a bot 😂

Different roles have different levels of flexibility. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female. I said that in my post.

If the OP were the surgeon I would expect her ability to contribute to parenting would be just as constrained by work demands.

My comments re surgeon pay were a little egregious but the sentiment is the same. A surgeon’s pay reflects the effort and time commitment of the role. The benefit is that there is more money coming into the household which can be used for wraparound care.

If anything your comments are more backwards than mine - staying home and looking after kids is f*cking hard work and shouldn’t be minimised.

Yes I have, I’m in one.

DH and I earn almost the same amount. However his role is client-facing. He is basically on call for demanding clients from about 7am-7pm.

My role is more “back of house”. I am able to work from home if I need. As a result I am in a position to do drop off/pick up, sick care etc. I work 4 days to allow me to complete tasks needed at home on the 5th day.

If we were talking about a couple who were both in roles equally demanding to a surgeon’s - then yes, both would have to be able to contribute fairly. Or care would have to be outsourced. But I suspect that it’s not the case here.

You are simply incorrect. I and other consultants are telling you the right numbers. You are not a consultant . You are wrong.

in knots of laughter at your ‘annual bonus of £7900 minimum for FTE’. Where on earth did you dream this up, hilarious.

must get in touch with each trust I’ve worked as a consultant and claim the last 16 years of ‘minimum annual bonuses’ lol

A full time consultant is taking home less than £5k per month, more like £4750 in their first year.

and it’s why there are many many vacancies in NHS consultants jobs as it’s so out of kilter with what they are paid nearby in Ireland or far in Aus or Canada. Hence the juniors are headed there ( and a few well established consultants in my department alone are also headed abroad just in very recent months)

Overall tho, that’s for the laugh, ‘minimum annual bonuses’ 😂😂😂

Precisely.

have you gotten your ‘minimum annual bonus if £7900 yet?!

Ibisdancer is arranging them.
I should be quids in with the 16 years I’ve not had these fictional bonuses, and am off too book holiday in Maldives

Yes I think it would be unreasonable to expect him to be able to leave work at short notice.

However, it’s fair to come to a compromise that works in your favour in some other aspect of parenting. Could be that he contributes more to childcare or does all the weekend pick ups and drop offs for example.

Thanks for this, olympicsrock. I posted way back, relying on the experience of friends married to surgeons, and was berated for suggesting that surgeons had quite a range of flexibility.

Well done for clarifying, it's so infuriating when people who do not actually work in the job feel they know more than those who do.

in knots of laughter at your ‘annual bonus of £7900 minimum for FTE’. Where on earth did you dream this up, hilarious.
She's C&P from the BMA page which includes a section on local CEAs but clearly completely misunderstood it. That line is from the section on how Trusts fund the scheme, not what is paid out.

Erm, I think you are paid enough to have stand by childcare!! Are you kidding!

Really, what sort of stand by child care?
if surgeon takes home £60k per year ( say if they are 5 years into consultant job), to cover all the costs of professional essentials ( GMC, RCS, MPS, travel), accommodation, food, clothing, how will they fund ‘stand by childcare’?

Of course they can’t afford it. Unless you think the ‘stand by childcare’ should be paid in sandwiches.

Ridiculous.

Habing some stand by childcare, whatever that is, is the remit of the very well off and doctors in this country haven’t been in that club for years.

So yes, surgeons can and will leave in a childcare emergency, and like any parent when their child is sick, they will get sick themselves , whatever.
Same as any other employee.

Another consultant here, about to call payroll and ask where my bonuses have been? 😂

Where is your proof? Perhaps you were paid that much when you were a newly qualified consultant however many years ago, but it beggars belief that current new consultants are being paid a full £10k/yr less than the minimum base salary listed in the BMA page for NHS consultants.

Just posting “you are wrong” and “I’m a consultant” over and over doesn’t cut the mustard.

I understood the annual bonus btw, it is funded at £7,900 per FTE and then is doled out with top performers getting a lot more, up to £35k and crappy ones getting £0. It’s a use it or lose it funding, so there is always a bonus.

An average consultant is going to get on average around £7,900 per year as a bonus. It’s a useful benchmark for estimating likely total take home pay.

Level 5 earns £105,390 base salary, which is take home of almost £70k
Not including the annual bonus which on average is and extra £7,900

PT childcare at around £1,200/mo is totally affordable. I am shocked you think it is not.

I am shocked you don’t think you are well off.
You make at least 3x the average FT wage.

Adding my proof. How are all these consultants on less than the minimum? Are you part timers?

Completely and utterly disagree. A consultant surgeon in NHS earns way more than a paltry 60k

Ridiculous so many ill informed comments. Why do you think consultants have been striking. You forgot all the tax and pension deductions and marginal tax rates. The nhs consultant salary take home after ten years is only £60 K. That is why many work OT and private so obviously results in less time for family life /childcare. You haven’t even mentioned the cost of divorce and moving house etc.

The average NHS consultant salary is £117k. That equates to monthly take home pay of £5751, closer to £70k than £60k. Pension deductions are a red herring as they’re deducted before tax and contribute to one of the most generous pension schemes in existence.

Pension contribution are up to 13.5% .
average salary doesn’t meant that much as the increments are very distant in years.

I know what the pension contribution rate is. It means that NHS consultants and other highly paid staff effectively have a tax free allowance of £26.25k. With a fabulous pension at the end of their career. My heart bleeds.

But the basic take home is not that high.
if you are a single parent for example two kids in a expensive area ( near a big hospital) the take home is about 5 or maybe 6. Two average workers take home is 4590 for example. You get no help childcare or anything if over £100k. £700 just for parking or commuting costs. Plus you have childcare. Yes you can work earn more in PP or OT but this will come at the expense of ever seeing your children. Yes the pension is good if you don’t die of stress before 67 or when we the gov decides.

Bearing in mind how late my consultant can sometimes be for the clinic I attend on occasion, I think he is doing all the drop offs, pick ups and emergency childcare.

I don't think anyone would try to claim that hospital Consultants are poor - though my final pay check when I retired was probably worth, in real terms, about 30% less than my first month's pay as a Consultant after 20+ years of service so I do get why current staff are unhappy.
And regarding Clinical Excellence Awards, it's changed since I retired to try to spread the funds out more evenly, so I am a bit out of the loop, but it has always been far more common not to have an award than to do so. It's hard to find any data on local CEAs, especially now that Trusts have a lot more choice aboit how they distribute their share of the pot, but as an example, from my last department of 15, I think 3 of us had awards and all at the lower end. (And certainly not £7.9k) I can't remember the exact figures but I think my CEA meant I took home maybe an extra £40 or £50 a week. Which I am not complaining about, but it was never going to fund a Maserati was it? National awards which are higher value are given to a few hundred of the tens of thousands of eligible doctors a year. Most of us will probably never meet someone who has one of those, never mind get one ourselves. It's anything but an automatic annual bonus for most people and suggesting that doctors who don't have an award are "crap" is incredibly rude.
Personally, I never had any major complaints about my pay and I do have a good pension compared to many. We're very comfortably off compared to lots of and we have a nice house in a good area. I am very grateful for that. But we are not super rich. Of course we could afford childcare, though when I had 2 in nursery full time it did make a substantial dent in my wages.
I don't think anyone is claiming they are on the bread line. But some posters seem to be suggesting that a Consultant could afford to be paying someone to be continually on standby as emergency childcare and it's that which people are objecting to. For context, I could probably count the number of times my children's health affected by attendance at work on the fingers of one hand over my 20 odd year Consultant career and 2 of those were hospital admissions so I don't think I would have let my mythical stand by emergency childcare person take that on anyway.
People are not walking out mid operation because their child has a sniffle - not anywhere I have ever worked anyway and if they did they'd be having some awkward conversations with their Clincal Director - but just like any other employee in any other job, Consultants with families, do on rare occasions have genuine emergencies which require them to leave work. And nobody is going to employ someone "just in case" for things that happen very infrequently. I had more short notice absences to deal with my parents' deaths than for my children's illnesses. Should I have had an on call emergency mourner on my payroll to deal with that for me too?

It doesn't matter how much they are paid. They don't have to. They are employees with full employment rights, including being ill and emergency leave to care for their children.