How much do you think doctors actually get paid?

[Hayley37888]

I find it ridiculous for their level of skills. No wonder they’re leaving for Australia / New Zealand

Having three sibling doctors and friends who are doctors and nurses, it is really sad to see posters on state about how rich they all are and privileged. Some perhaps, but many not.

My siblings and some friends had no helping hand, state educated, child carers for a disabled parent, each left medicine with c.£25K of debt. They work hard, have sacrificed relationships with partners and family and suffered with exhaustion and stress through their careers. As Junior Doctors, they would regularly work 80-90 hour weeks, then after a spell on night shifts would have 1 day off (from 8am that morning once they'd finished) before returning to day shifts. How many of us have to switch from days to nights in their jobs?

They have seen people suffer and die and take home trauma that stays with them. Yes, IF they become consultants they take home a higher salary, but they also make pretty big decisions and calls for the very sick.

It's a shame that we criticise doctors based on their "high" salaries and cannot see the value they give and the personal sacrifices they make.

Of course we poach doctors from other countries. That’s the nature of an international job market when you are a professional. DH has worked abroad because It pays better, far better. It was a pleasant lifestyle for add and I. We are just one of a list of countries. Some richer than us. Some poorer. We loose our professionals to the richer countries, and attract professionals from the poorer countries. That’s how the job market works outside of unskilled labour.

Wrong.

All doctors are junior doctors unless they go on to train and go into consultancy - another 3 years + of training and vigorous exams.

The junior doctor with 20+ years experience in A&E dealing with every kind of shit you can imagine and more is earning the same payscale as a newly qualified one, with the long, shit hours, no guaranteed holiday time off, incredibly unsociable hours....

So it’s okay for your DH to be paid well then? You had a pleasant lifestyle? Did you…have a Tesla? Or is it just doctors that aren’t allowed to be “wealthy”?

As they should.

Who defines skilled vs unskilled labour?

if you think unskilled = low paid then that’s nonsense.

What actually happens is those on obscenely high salaries market the idea that as there aren’t as many jobs at that level, they should be paid more. They all sit on remuneration boards and tell each other they should be well paid so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Those on lower salaries have no such advantage - the equivalent would be trade unions. Hence them remaining on low pay.

In some sectors it is purely about skills but in many it absolutely is not, and it’s about snobbery/ignorance about what lower paid jobs actually entail.

Many highly paid board roles for example are just held by people who can bullshit and bullshit well.

I think ElliF and her DH came back to be Deliveroo riders.

That's why she's so keen to recommend it to other people.

I reckon her DH left her when he got sick of her not being able to tell the difference between loose and lose

DS is a junior Doctor and may look to move to Australia next year. In addition to low pay junior Doctors also have to fund some of their own training and their own significant insurance costs (negligence cases are soring). It is not just pay, it is the vast volumes of work- far more than Doctors are paid for, poor working conditions (the NHS treats staff quite badly and Management are often quite poor and bullying is rife). Unless these core issues are addressed difficult times lie ahead.

Good luck to her.

I've had several friends go and they've had really nice careers with a much better work life balance

DH is a Gp with 20years experience, has post grad qualifications in contraception, sexual health and women’s health. He is paid £70,000 a year and works 7.30-7pm, Monday to Friday. He does get to opt into a NHS pension but also has to pay insurance, BMA cover, GMC registration fees and fees to his other registering bodies ( about £7,000 ) a year. He resigned from his post just before Christmas and will work overseas from Easter. No job is worth how he is treated and the hours he works. Two of his close colleagues have committed suicide since he started training due to the pressure of the job.

I earn well into six figures and don't have anything like the level of disruption or stress that doctors do. I give quite a lot to my job but I can guard my own life too. I'm good at what I do, I work hard and over the years if I've ever felt that I wasn't being recognised for what I was doing, I moved company. Should I be earning more than a doctor? Hell no. Nothing I do has anything like the human impact or risk that they have. The big difference is that I always had choice where I worked and doctors are exploited because they don't have that choice if they want to stay in this country and that is used against them. It is a sad state of affairs and I don't blame them for moving abroad.

That’s not what I said. What I said was unskilled labour is not afforded the opportunities that professionals are when selling their skills abroad for higher salaries. That does not equate to salary though. I know someone very rich who buys and sells wooden pallets. He buys them from warehouses who stack them outside, collects them, hammers nails in them, and then sellers them to warehouses or hauliers who need pallets at a specific location at a specific time. And he’s minted. But he doesn’t have to opportunity to go and do the same in Dubai or Manila because it is a skill anyone can have and many do.

A doctor is different and they can negotiate salaries on the world stage. Doctors from Manila apply for visas and tender jobs here in the UK and our doctors do the same in Dubai.

And to the PP who questioned salaries, I don’t care what people earn. I merely pointed out that, In my opinion, the richest people IN THE WORLD do not have any right to complain about their salaries. At £80K a doctor is a top 10% earner in the UK. They earn more than 90% of everyone else. That puts them in the top 2% of all earners on the planet, in the richest era of evolution that has ever existed.

When you are in the top 2% of richest people who have ever walked the earth, you have no right whining and spinning sob stories, because most people are to gullible and too eager to please with their support for a good story. Most wont stop to think about what really is happening. Doctors are poor. It’s gaslighting and we just lap it up.

What a shame this didn’t pan out as expected.

This is such an odd argument.

Yes, we're all earning better than the neanderthals or even people in the first world war era. Not just doctors, but even deliveroo riders. Great.

But that's not the comparator. The comparator is what those undertaking similarly busy, high responsibility, high skill roles in this and other countries and additionally against what the same roles paid years ago.

There has been a relative erosion in pay and those concerned no longer agree that the remuneration matches the role and so 98pc have voted to strike. That's it.

The fact that they have it better then the Tudors isn't really relevant.

I'm a consultant. I just worked out my hourly rate -using my gross pay including my on call supplement, London weighting etc.

it's £45/ hour.

This is based on working my contracted hours. This never happens. I'm in early/ finish late the majority of the time.

We launched a big new patient safety initiative today. I was in at work last night for 4 hrs doing posters/ publicity and putting the new materials in place. I will get no recognition for this.

I take responsibility for all the patients I care for and those seen by junior doctors in my name. I cover a 1:13 specialist on call service and am frequently called in overnight which carries no additional pay. In the past 13 weeks I have done almost 24 hours awake twice caring for extremely sick and vulnerable patients.

So no I don't think doctors are paid enough and will strike and am actively looking at a route out of the NHS.

And the pension doesn't make up for it. I've been qualified 20 years and I've seen continual erosion of the pension in that time. I'm extremely concerned I"m paying for something that will no longer exist when I'm old enough to get it. I'd rather have the cash now.

Wow. That’s disingenuous. The fact that they earn more than 98% of the world at the moment, right now, is significant. This is just a bunch of really rich people wanting even more, during the worst financial crisis I history. Why won’t they accept the same 2.5% the MPs got? Because they are greedy. But the; I’m not a doctor. I’m guessing if I earned £80K a year, I’d just want more and more too.

@ElliF you clearly haven't got a flipping clue. Your posts are just embarrassing. Why don't you trot on and concentrate on improving your spelling.

I am a senior trainee in forensic psychiatry with 10 years of experience working as a doctor. I have been covering this shift for the past 3 weeks on my day off as a favour but this week have declined. I've received about 15 phone calls from managers but I would rather spend my day taking my kids out.

£9.38 an hour for this 16 hour shift. It doesn't matter if the shift isn't busy. If I am expected to be available and to provide advice over the phone I should be paid decently.

Well, if socialism takes hold you’ll be fine. They will nationalise all the public employees pensions and redistribute them more equitably across the public employee retirement spectrum. They’re already forcing state employees to keep their pensions in government bonds, and they’ve gone further in Poland.

So you’re right. But at least any excess in your pension pot will be distributed to your fellow nurses and government employees. It won’t likely be used to for the poor. I watch what happens in other countries, so I suspect our more socially minded politicians are well aware of how to make gilt edges pensions more equitable, and from a public PR perspective, sharing the pension pot to fill the black holes is a vote winner.

It's not disingenuous at all.

Comparing the salary of a "junior" doctor that is a week off becoming a Consultant to what a rice farmer earns in Vietnam or what a cleaner earns in the Democratic Republic of Congo is not a useful comparator, but that's what you're asking people to do.

Even deliveroo drivers like you and your husband earn more than these groups. It doesn't mean that they can't ask for more.

most junior docs Who are ft, are working 48hr week on average - which is about 1 day more than standard jobs (40hr week). So a registrar on 60k is earning the same per hour as someone on 50k (for 40hr week). This is not taking into account unpaid overtime or lack of breaks which occurs very frequently. Also not taking into account additional training courses/exams they must do - in their spare time and at mostly at their own expense (small amount of study budget, but doesn’t go v far).

The doctors on this thread will be taking their pensions at about 75 at this rate, approx 10 years after they died of exhaustion. They will all be paying 5-10K in annual allowance tax charges on top of their income tax which will be either 60% or 45% as they are all incredibly wealthy as you’ve highlighted.

So don’t panic, their money will come back to you. To pay for your taxpayer funded remedial spelling classes with any luck

When you consider doctors would have been pretty much top of their class academically the pay is poor.

I earn £85k for a 35 hour fully flexible week and 20% pension contribution as well as all the usual private medical etc.

I think i'm underpaid but the flexibility works for my family. In private practice with my experience (although for more hours) at my age I would easily be on £250k . I've been on around £80k for over 15 years now. I appreciate it is significantly more than many families but it is significantly less that the calibre of education required to be a doctor would earn in other industries.

What part of that was unknown to you during your training, came as a surprise, and was not entirely your own choice? Do you, even now, not have the option to increase your salary? When you compare yourself to everyone else in the country, are you content to be in the top 10% of all wager earners? Or do you believe doctors should be a top 5% of all UK earners? Just curious.