Doctor salary

[Jessica231]

I was shocked to learn today what a junior Doctor is actually paid. No wonder the NHS is in such a state.

£14 per hour for a newly qualified doctor…

£24 per hour for 8+ years of experience….

I pay my cleaner more…..

Embarrassed to say this is something I wasn’t aware of! The pay seems totally incompatible with the time they spend training, skills required and the responsibility involved.

Anyone else shocked?

I've always felt studying medicine is a serious con. The brightest young things, striving all the way through high school, proud parents pushing them on. To do an extended degree at their own expense, involving arduous and time consuming academic endeavour and physical slog on the wards/placements, to finally get a job where you don't get to necessarily choose the location, rotation etc and have no say over your rota or annual leave for years. You get to stay up all night, work weekends, birthdays all in hideous conditions, pay insane parking charges and shell out for endless insurances, professional fees, training and exams.....and in many cases you earn less than all your friends, have higher debts and have to delay buying a house etc because you're not guaranteed a job close by.

I'm seriously glad people do it, and we all benefit. But why anyone does is beyond me!

No, my DD is a medic

I certainly wouldn't encourage my DCs to do medicine. Which is really sad. But the reality is awful.

No, my elder son is now a GP and his pay per hour as a junior doctor was derisory. I don’t think most people really appreciate their hours and pay.

It’s madness isn’t it. Now you see why so many leave for Australia/Canada/ New Zealand or take on private gigs. With the grades they have to get they could have studied anything. I bet there’s not many straight A students who went into finance on £24/hour 8 years in.

NMW is £10.42 an hour, so £14 is a joke considering the level of responsibility, education and training required.

There was a junior doctor on here asking about food banks.

Says everything really.

I have many medics in my family. It is not a profession you go into if you want to make a lot of money .Some work as locum doctors which is better paid. However, contract lengths vary and often involve constant changes in location
Many doctors haven’t managed to get on the property ladder.
You generally start making the money when you become a consultant.

DD2 was interested in studying either medicine or economics. When she looked at the derisory pay for doctors she decided on economics

Funny you should say this, I sat in an NHS clinic last week and was thinking the exact same thing. All the staff (including senior docs) were rushed off their feet, patients grumbling, presuming they had no breaks, clinic was 2 hours behind schedule. This clinic is always like this. Not to mention downside on the inflexibly of the role for home life, long hours etc..

I wondered whether they thought this was how their career would wound up 20yrs ago in med school...

My brother is a surgeon and currently earning less after 15 years than I did after 8 years of being a surveyor. He is currently doing a fellowship before becoming a consultant, so it's a bit different, but the pay is shocking given their hours, levels of stress and responsibility.

He told my four children to study anything but medicine, which is very sad - and serious.

I watched a video earlier, a nurse while working in the uk was getting around £13.80 an hour she's now out in Melbourne working in an ice cream shop on the beach for the equivalent of £17 an hour, says it all really! Can't blame her for leaving the profession.

DH was a GP (salaried) not partner. After being qualified for 25 years he was taking home £3,500 a month for seeing 90 patients a day 8-7 four days a week and then working a admin day on the other. Our DC have been completely put off going into a career which breaks you.

I know people who qualified as doctors then moved into investment banking.

Others who were smart enough to be doctors but were directed towards investment banking/private wealth management to have a better quality of life.

Hours and dedication required are similar but pay massively different.

And this was 20 years ago. Parents who were looking purely at financial security, and who were themselves in very comfortable situations, didn't want their children doing medicine. It was a surprise to me as from my position as a child of a single mother, being a dr was the pinnacle of achievement and brought wealth and security.

They weren't wrong. But I'd say drs add far more value to society!!

It is really shocking. No wonder there’s huge problems in the NHS if this is how our government are treating them

I’m a junior Dr with 6 years experience post qualification. I’m on mat leave at the moment but seriously considering a cleaning job, shop work basically anything. Once I take into account having to drop my hours to “part time” (but really a usual persons FT hours) so I can actually see my baby some days before she goes to bed, all the professional fees I have to pay, a looming £1000 exam that I may not even pass and the time taken away from my baby to study, childcare fees (extortionate!) and my hour commute each way (which I have no say over) then it really doesn’t pay to be working this job. Especially with all the stress. It’s fucking awful out there at the moment and I’m basically just waiting for the day, where due to the pressures of the system, I will make a mistake that ends my career and probably destroys my worth and mental health.

That does say a lot although £17 per hour won't go far in Melbourne at the same time !

Junior doctors are very poorly paid but the money comes at consultant level especially when they can pick up private work. I know a lot of consultants and they are earning an absolute fortune. It may just be in London but they’re on a 6 figure basic in their nhs work and then, goodness knows how much of a fortune in private work and the only one who doesn’t do private work is in acute medicine. It’s enough to live in incredibly expensive areas in big houses and to put 2 or 3 kids through private school;

Consultants are very well paid and have excellent job security. All careers have lower paid years before reaching a better level..

Not every Consultant can pick up private work.

In some specialties (including mine!) it barely exists.

In the others there isn't the work for every single consultant to do it.

And not everyone wants to - my NHS job is stressful enough thanks without the idea I'd see some private patients in my time off.

@catlovingdoctor do you really think consultants are well paid?

I'm one and I don't. Consultant pay has fallen by one third in real terms over the past decade.

My friends in alternative professions out earn me by multiples. My highly respected and prestigious teaching hospital department cannot attract new consultants due to the high cost of living.

Also don't forget that my generation got shat upon as junior doctor and is now being fucked over as consultants. When cover was needed at short notice when I was a junior it was absolutely expected that the other junior doctors on the rota would do this. Now quite rightly they are reluctant to do so (especially as their employers often try to avoid paying them). Unfortunately this then shifts the responsibility to the consultants. We aren't contractually obliged to cover, there are no nationally agreed rates for us to cover but morally we can't just walk away and leave wards uncovered overnight so we do it. But our NHS employers try very very very hard to avoid actually paying us for doing so and believe me being resident, first on call when you are nearing 50 is no fun whatsoever. The only shift I did like that took me a week to recover from (and I do my now non-resident on call every 10 days, with far far fewer negative effects). I monitor how often this is happening for my department and it is a regular occurrence.

I'm fortunate - I'm old. I came out of medical school with debt for my living expenses but not tuition fees. The average medical student now has 90K of debt upon graduation and are then paid considerably less than their peers doing alternative professional roles for the NHS while being expected to burden huge expenses to proceed in their chosen career for exams. In most other professions such expenses are paid by the employer. In addition there are other issues with working conditions in the modern NHS - no office space, stuff being stolen, no-where to rest on shift etc.

I would (and do) strongly advise anyone coming behind me not to do medicine. My SIL (who is a GP) is of the same opinion.

Excellent job security - hmm the NHS keeps quiet the number of people kicked out with a settlement and an NDA.

I’m shocked by this. When I think how much we pay the lazy juniors in the finance industry … and you’re right, as employers we find their post grad training.

my dd wants to be a teacher and that actually sounds better.

this country is definitely screwed. Where is all the nhs money going? Is it inefficient useless IT projects, maintaining costs of ancient or PfI hospitals, bloated management, litigation and compensation, expensive treatments?

we are going to have to make only core treatment free at the point of use

well done Tories, you broke the NHS, the thing I was most proud of as Brit.

Hi, thanks for your detailed response.

I didn't mean to trivialise your hard work but I just wanted to give a different perspective.

I happen to be a dental student so occasionally get snide remarks from medics who insinuate dentists have it easier...

For example, NHS dentists might be expected to do multiple items of complex restorative treatment on one patient- but they'll be paid the same as if they've only done one. They might do four root canals and crowns on one patient, taking most of the working day, and be paid barely £120. In contrast, a medical consultant's day rate is clearly higher. The medical consultant won't have to stretch their neck and back to perform a dozen treatments a day. The dentist will have had an identical academic record to their medical counterpart but may be on far less money. So in that sense, yes, I do think consultants are highly paid.

In their current contracts their pay begins at £88k basic which is, undeniably, high pay compared to most of the population. (It being worth less in London is a separate issue...)

Fund not find*