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

Okay, using you hypothetical analogy there. If a rice farmer were to come on MN and make a coherent argument for why they should be paid more, I strongly suspect their argument would have more merit. Not least being because they are being exploited by us.

Foreign exploitation aside, which you seem so happy to disregard as irrelevant, and taking only the UK population into consideration, you are still looking at employees who sit well and truly into the top 10% of UK wage earners. Is your contention that they are being mis-valued, and should be top 5%ers?

And lastly, if they were not so doggedly defensive of a system of waste and corruption that provides relatively poor quality and slow services in relation to their £180Billions budget, maybe those outside of the woe-is-me echo chamber would stop and listen.

I don’t work, BTW. DH earns enough for the whole family.

Well it wasn't really my analogy, you're the one that (bizarrely, in my view) introduced an irrelevant comparative across the entire existence of humankind. Maybe you should explain why it matters when assessing the remuneration in this particular instance? Or is your argument "You can't earn more, you get more than cavemen!"?

My contention is simply that the group in question have had a real terms pay decrease in the region of 20 to 30pc since 2010, 98pc of those that voted wish to strike over this, and this is what they're going to do. If restoring pay moves them from the top 10pc to the top 5pc (your numbers, I haven't checked them) then so be it. Pretty simple

I guessed that you don't work already.

I finished medical school in 2007 and am still a 'junior' hospital doctor.

I work 40hrs a week (which is 80 per cent of a full time rota) in a hospital speciality. Over 90 per cent of my hours are done in 13 hour shifts (the occasional 9 til 5 day happens when I go to a course for my own professional development). The shifts I do are about two thirds 8.30am - 9.30pm, and about one third are night shifts which are 8.30pm til 9.30am.

On these 13hr shifts I am supposed to get a total of 1hr break time (I think? I'm not actually sure - noone tells you this information), but on about half of shifts I don't have any break (not even to go to the loo) because it's so manic. And on day shifts if I manage to take a lunchbreak I'm expected to attend teaching whilst eating lunch.

I'll be a consultant in 1 year's time, and overnight when the consultants are at home I'm the most senior doctor looking after some very sick patients.

On most shifts I stay between 30 and 60 minutes late. We're supposed to claim this (and missed breaks) as overtime but your consultants get informed if you claim overtime and the payment for the overtime comes from the department's budget. The consultants are then supposed to encourage you to develop better time management skills so you take all your breaks and don't stay late. I want a reference to join them as a consultant soon so I don't want to get a bad reputation as a trouble maker, and anyhow I have never been given a log in for the overtime reporting system or been told how to do this. I have seen colleagues be criticised for reporting overtime so this is not a theoretical concern.

I regularly do courses and don't get the expenses back which are worth hundreds of pounds because you need two physical signatures on a bit of paper from two consultants to sign off the expenses in advance and with our shift system this is nearly impossible. I commute nearly a hundred miles to work as I chose to do my training at a hospital far from home as it isn't offered nearer my own home - I pay for hotels so I can stay near the hospital between back to back shifts.

On the plus side I absolutely love my job.

I get paid a salary of £51.5k/year plus extra for unsociable hours working. That gives a take home pay of about £3400pcm which according to one online calculator is equivalent to a salary of £55k.

As a junior doctor I don't do private work and I won't do any as a consultant in my speciality either.

I graduated before the huge student debts of the current cohort of junior doctors so I feel I've been well treated in comparison with my younger colleagues. But I voted yes to striking to support them.

My cleaners hourly equivalent is £20. She works hard and does a fantastic job but has no qualifications. I know which job I'd rather do for the stress and responsibilities!

Attributing arbitrary values to what you think a person should get paid is meaningless when that person does not have to compete with anyone else or demonstrate value for money in order to get their pay packet.

In every other aspect of the economy, people get paid proportionally to the amount of value they bring to society, and those values are established in a competitive environment where the customer determines the value of the service they receive and can vote with their pocket book if they believe they are not getting fair value for money.

However, you are advocating that those holding a monopoly position and already receiving the highest pay packets in the land should be entitled to more money regardless of whether they provide value for money or not. Not withstanding their squandering of £180Billions on a piss poor service.

Every single one of them has the opportunity to compete, like for like, with similar professionals anywhere in the world, and many do. The average GP salary in the UAE for example is £38Kpa, one of the richest and most well equipped countries in the world.

But then there is no Government mandated monopoly in play in the UAE, and doctors have to compete based on the value they bring to the job, rather than just what they feel like.

I’d suggest that privatisation would be one way of lowering the payroll costs, and expelling all the waste expenditure from the system. Let’s face it, a private healthcare system couldn’t possible be any slower that the current system. Doctors pay is just one example of excessive renumeration and waste in the NHS machine.

Everyone please ignore ElliF. She is making up a lot of her own numbers and it's just ridiculous.

@ElliF do you think I'm overpaid then?

@ElliF you won’t be telling the Drs to go to Deliveroo when you need one ! You are talking a lot of nonsense to be fair . The pay isn’t that great when you break it down by the long, unsociable hours they work . The responsibility and stress is enormous.

People commenting on spelling and grammar here - that's cheap point scoring - forget it - use your perceived superior brains to tune in and appreciate the meaning of the communication.

My daughter is a junior doctor in her first year. They don't get a choice of where they get to live so rent will be a problem for many years. She is paid £14/hr and has huge responsibilities! I am a nurse and was shocked at her salary. She isn't going to stay here for long though and I am glad! Many of her colleagues are leaving too. Don't think we will have a free NHS for long.

The ones I know are in their 50s so all earn £100k++ up. The ones abroad earn £300k++

I think you are confusing monthly and yearly salary for UAE.
An easy mistake to make

This is largely word salad and you've not answered the main issue - why are the historical incomes of humanity of importance in determining current doctor payscales - again, that's YOUR analogy.

You also are confusing the issues around monopoly. Junior Doctors are NOT in a monopoly position - in fact it's almost the opposite. It's a monopsony where, in this country, the NHS is the only buyer.

A £60k car, Maserati or not is beyond the reach of the vast majority of people in the country

Wow to be honest the turn out to the ballot was very high and 98% voting for strike action which is unprecedented speaks for itself. Junior doctors are fed up and want change, can't blame them. I think they're including A&E in the strikes so good luck to anyone who needs to go during those 3 days!

Well there’s an unfounded accusation.
Which numbers specifically are made up?
Let’s prove this theory of yours, or are you just believing what you want to believe because it reinforces your insular world view?

Nobody decides to become a GP or work in a hospital to get rich. The vast majority of medical students are well aware of this, but hats off to them for doing work that still have massive value to society.

The richest doctors are plastic surgeons, dentists and dermatologists (self-employed with their own practice, not salaried). Those are virtually the only three fields where they earn what people tend to assume doctors earn.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I was offered a role as a pharmacist in UAE much earlier in my career with a salary of more than double what you are quoting as the average GP salary there

All your posts are utter nonsense - only a fool would attempt to try twist the monopoly the NHS have over hiring health professionals and therefore supressing their wages around to imply it is because they are overpaid.

Equally, it takes being completely clueless to try dump the NHS waste onto their most treasured asset - the staff!! I could tell about millions and billions that are funnelled into useless projects that have little hope of success with ever increasing costs along the way. That is the waste, not paying staff for working into the ground.

You've dug yourself a massive hole, please stop making it bigger. All you are proving is that you just don't have a clue - it is blindingly obvious you don't currently work for a living!

I don't know a single professional person from my university cohort (medics and non-medics) that couldn't afford this.

I don't think a sub 6 figure income and a medium posh family car is living the dream as the previous poster seems to imply, but you may have different standards.

Personally I'd feel that I'd failed (in work terms) if this was me at the back end of a professional career.

@ElliF - do u not think privatisation will drive up the costs of healthcare - as seen in USA? We would need to employ a whole layer of people to extract payments and that is before the health corporations extract a profit for shareholders. The nhs doesn’t spend a huge amount on health for our demographic (more older people) and as a proportion of gdp. We have a low number of docs and nurses per capita compared to similar developed countries - in part due to the high vacancy rate due to poor working conditions and low salary

YANBU that doctors are underpaid-especially those on the new plan, recently qualified, who are worse off than any others.

I think the opening OP pictures should clarify job titles.

My point was not really about what you could afford, or your aspirations, or my standards, but about the fact that you came across as very dismissive of the poster. And the reality is that the vast majority of people in this country could not afford it. Perhaps you didn't intend to be dismissive though?

I absolutely did intend to be dismissive (just so we're clear.)

To look at the car that someone drives (and not even that impressive a car, for the record) without knowing any of the context (maybe they saved for it for years, maybe their partner is rich, maybe they bought it second hand seeing as they can be bought for under 20k for something 5-6 years old) and using that as some kind of example to suggest that this represents some huge degree of largesse for someone that is a relatively senior professional is ridiculous.

Come to think of it, I wasn't dismissive enough.

1. I just checked out the current salaries at NMC Hospitals in the UAE. If you can be paid double that, or more then why complain. You have the opportunity to sell your skills to anyone anywhere in the world, and the UAE is not the worst place in the world to live. Very luxurious lifestyle.
2. You acknowledge that the NHS has a monopoly position in the market. I suspect if people were free to negotiate their own salaries, salaries would drop, because in an open market people compete based on the value they offer compared to other candidates, and how much the employer is willing to pay. Employers pay more for sought after assets, and less for also-rans.
3. You admit the colossal waste of funds within the NHS, yet we never see doctors protecting these wastes of funding. Why? Because they have a vested interest is concealing waste and not rocking the the gravy train. And who makes the decisions? NHS staff. They entire structure is riven with fat and rotten to the core. I understand you have hung your career on a single employer, but to continue to bleed the taxpayer dry while protecting the institutions squandering of funds, or at the very least not having the backbone or temerity speak out against mismanagement of funds is lamentable.

Whichever way you cut it, you cannot justify saying, ‘we are the richest people in the country and we deserve to be richer.’ You don’t. We deserve better staff in the NHS. We deserve accountability, and we deserve value for money.

@prescribingmum
You know, if you said, ‘I know we waste a lot of taxpayers money, and we should get our house in order before we go and ask for more money.’ I could see that as being a suitable response. Instead you went with, ‘I know we waste a lot of taxpayers money, but it’s not my fault, so I want more money.’ It is that attitude or entitlement matched with unaccountability that the public have an issue with. The NHS has the money, but the staff choose to spend it on other things, and then want sympathy from the public and bailing out because they can’t agree on how they should divvy up the balance.