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

Please everyone ignore @ElliF who clearly has no handle whatsoever on reality. I am genuinely interested in this topic and hate to see it derailed by an ignorant troll.

So you can admit your assumption of a GP in UAE being paid £38k pa was utter bollocks?!
You have the opportunity to sell your skills to anyone anywhere in the world
THIS IS WHAT DOCTORS ARE DOING!!!!!!! We don't have enough - can't fill vacancies or retain the ones we have because the working conditions are so poor. They are emigrating to countries that pay double or more for better conditions and respect.

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.
Once again, utter bollocks. It is called supply and demand - basic economics. The demand for doctors is greater than supply so salaries will rise for the doctors we do have available to work. Employers will be willing to pay for highly educated and qualified individuals and we - the public - will have to pay if there is no NHS. Want to see a specialist who is renown in their field for your condition - pay more. Ask yourself why doctor salaries are so much higher in all other developed countries compared to UK. Also, why do our doctors regularly emigrate there but none want to come here to work. The answer is staring you in the face - you seem to be too stupid to admit it

You admit the colossal waste of funds within the NHS, yet we never see doctors protecting these wastes of funding.
Once again, utter ignorance on your part. The wasting of funds is towards massive contracts for IT systems/procurement etc. How is a doctor - who has absolutely no say in which system the hospital pays for or which company supplies their equipment - supposed to protect this? If you hadn't already noticed (and let's be honest, there is no way you are astute enough to realise), they are busy doing front-line work seeing patients rather than negotiating contracts with companies.
The other waste of funds is on agency staff. This is because they cannot recruit permanent staff as no-one wants to do the job. So the rate for a locum shift goes higher and higher until someone decides it is worth spending 12 hours in A&E for upwards of £200/hour. Unfortunately you cannot force anyone to take on a permanent post there for a measly £20/hour when they are doing the job that 3 should do when fully staffed, won't get a break for 12+ hours on every shift, will stay an extra hour or 2 at the end without pay....
Pay doctors better and they will take on the perm roles, this will lead to posts being filled so working conditions are not so horrific (they don't do the job of 3 people alone and get to eat/ use the toilet), this will make the career more attractive to others.

This is good advice - it has stopped me
from exploding 😂

My view, which hopefully is wrong, is that the increasing feminisation of the medical workforce has massively contributed to the erosion of pay. When it was terrifying male surgeons playing golf every week with a SAHW who took care of everything at home, they commanded proportionally higher salaries. Once soft skills like communication, being caring etc. became rightly more important the value of the job declined.

Those men aren’t in medicine anymore, the power has dwindled as women are not valued. All female dominated workforces get paid less so I think that is why medicine is heading the same way. I hope this view isn’t correct mind, it would be shit if I’m right tbh!

@ElliF For someone that's acknowledged you don't actually work (have you ever worked?), you seem to have A LOT to say about those who do, especially those in highly specialised, skilled and demanding roles. I gave you the benefit of the doubt on another thread because I thought maybe you were not quite the full shilling, but really I think you're just a judgemental, goady t**t. This thread is genuinely interesting and it's a shame you've derailed yet another another one with utter nonsense.

I mean, the level of ignorance on display here:

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.

The Govt have drained the NHS financially, and you've walked right into their trap of wanting to the public to believe its...what, the fault of entitled doctors, surgeons?

Don’t waste your time replying to her, she’ll start going on about rice farmers again and I’ll have to gouge my eyes out in rage

This episode of More or Less will give you some background on nurses' pay, which is somewhere around average in the EU charts. Move to Ireland and Germany to earn more.

I had a very money-orientated medic acquaintance who was an A&E consultant and retrained to be a GP, then offered her services as a locum and was earning anything from £600-3k a day when we were last in touch. She was working 2-3 days a week out of choice. I know a consultant paediatrician married to a GP who live in a seafront £2+million house in their 40s. I have an early-retired consultant neurologist acquaintance who used to whinge about the £1million cap on his pension fund but has still somehow bought two London properties for his children outright and has a small buy-to-let empire. He got bored with retirement so is going back part time.

Market forces when there is more demand than supply leads to wages rising. Even in countries with decent pay and conditions there are shortages so this will probably continue on here rather than resolving so doctors would more than likely be paid more- as we see happening elsewhere in the world.

I'm not sure what power you feel doctors have over budgets and expenditure, I guarantee if they had more of a say beyond their immediate departments priorities would be very different.

Just looked up job adverts, it's 80-90K/year.
GPs also get about a tenner per childhood vaccination given and more recently per covid jab given via NHSBSA, so that will up their wages quite a bit I should imagine, they've always had the payment incentive per vaccine.

I think when they're on rounds or less than a consultant they're probably underpaid and more importantly to me they are overworked and therefore their decision-making and abilities will be undermined because of lack of sleep which I think is unfair and dangerous.

A surgeon gets more than that though, that's a fact, have they deducted expenses like travel, lunch, coffee, pension, housing?

I know a consultant paediatrician married to a GP who live in a seafront £2+million house in their 40s

That's nice, even if they topped out on NHS wages they'd have to have a helping hand in purchasing a multi million pound property. Unless they also locum or work privately instead or in addition to their NHS work? Are we suggesting all doctors should just work privately?

The Govt have drained the NHS financially, and you've walked right into their trap of wanting to the public to believe its...what, the fault of entitled doctors, surgeons?

Except for the £180Billions a year you mean?
NHS staff are wasting money left, right and centre. It might not be you personally, and it might not be their person sitting next to you, or the person in the room down the hall. But the staff who may not be you or your colleague, still make the decisions to waste the money given to it, and the rest of the staff stand around and watch it happen and don’t give a F because they have no responsibility to be financially responsible. The believe in the endless money from the taxpayer. It’s so easy to demand more and spend as you please when it’s not your money you are spending.
Change the culture and you’ll change the outcome.

And I get why you don’t like hearing anything from outside your own echo chamber. It’s far more comforting to just bitch about your employer and the ungrateful society outside the hospital walls. You provide life critical services. But that does not in anyway justify current or historic greed. We all have the desire to be the richest people in the UK. You don’t have the right to demand it as a single homogenous entity.

I am sure there are doctors from may other countries who would welcome the opportunities and the benefits of living and working in the UK. Let’s given them a chance at the privileged lifestyles we enjoy, and let those who want even more privileges go elsewhere for work.

I work in the NHS and I don't see the waste you describe , except what we spend on agency staff because we can't recruit due to shut wages and conditions

I have been a doctor for 6 years. I am working 60% which is 30 hours a week. I also work on average 4hrs unpaid a week and also spend 2-3hrs a week unpaid on mandatory research projects, audits and reflections. This is 36-37hrs a week, the same as many full time jobs. I earn £2k a month even though I am working pretty much full time hours. My husband is a doctor and lives on the other side of the UK (we don't get much of a choice on where we live when training) we pay one mortgage and one rent. I have two kids and almost all my income goes on childcare. Childcare for nights is very expensive and I pay £20/hr which is more than I earn. I love being a doctor and I always genuinely wanted to help people but it is too difficult now. I am in a worse off financial situation and it is impossible. I have tried for so long but I cannot continue working in the NHS. My husband and I are both moving abroad. Anybody in my circumstance would do the same. It has been very difficult over the past few years and I wish it did not come to this but I cannot keep uprooting my kids and living like this.

No, the US has private medical, that's why they can AFFORD to pay them handsomely. That's the difference.

How about paying £3.80 prescribe £1.40 of Paracetamol? That’s £80million right there if you just stop prescribing over the counter medications and tell service users to buy them themselves at the supermarket. What’s the current price in the BNF for Paracetamol? Why are the NHS paying £2.40 to pharmacists to dispense over the counter medications? Who is their right mind is writing prescriptions for OTC meds and not giving a F about the money? And yes, I realise there are exceptions. Those who live remotely and have no access to supermarkets, and those who are imo less and rely on others for shopping. But exceptions do not prove the rule.

Would £80Millions help with pay shortfalls? That’s one single generic med. what about Ibuprofin? Low dose Codeine/Paracetamol? Paracetamol and Ibuprofin suspensions?

But there is no waste? Nothing to see here. Move along.

We can’t trust the NHS to be honest with the public about expenditure, so the best we can hope for is either an independent inquiry, or a contraction that forces the NHS to remove superfluous services and the associated staff.

Do you know where they prescribe paracetamol? The intensive care unit. Via drip. It's a really effective painkiller and used for temperature control.

I hope you are not suggesting that patients families should be sent out to buy and crush up paracetamol tablets. It's really not the same thing!

Thank you @ElliF for highlighting problems with wastage within the NHS. It definitely is a huge problem and the government and managers are largely to blame. Please see the attached image.There is also a lot of productivity lost in the workforce due to unsuitable IT equipment.

Unfortunately medical staff in hospitals have little control over the distribution of spending within the NHS. It definitely is a problem and this money could be used to pay NHS staff better.

I’m talking about prescription meds that are dispensed by the pharmacies in the UK. But you’re right. It’s only £80Millions. I realise that’s a small amount of money in doctor circles. But you go to work every day. Does it feel like you work in a £180Billions institution? Or does it feel like you work in a badly run shambles of an institution filled with bureaucracy, politics, red tape and infighting?

@ElliF you really have no idea 😂 perhaps go and work in a hospital for a year and then come back with your non stop figures and facts ( hopefully accurate ones)

@ElliFTake a step back, you sound hysterical.

Yes. At that is a single instance that merited looking at for political reasons. I personally couldn’t give a F about £4b as a one off loss. But it happens hundred of times a year at smaller scales, and it’s brushed under the carpet and hidden. It happens every single years, and this is NHS staff employed by the NHS using taxpayers money. It’s a shambolic organisation and all we hear are the bleeding hearts of the UK’s highest earners complaining that they don’t get their fair share of the pie.

The richest people in country definitely do earn enough money. All you have to do is ask the general public. I realise there is a certain distain for asking joe public what they think you are worth, but we are meant to live in an equitable society, so it would be interesting if we put doctors wages to a public vote.

But I’m guessing there isn’t a doctor in the land who would be willing to know what their communities think their real worth is. And so they bitch and moan and pat each other's backs on a thread, and rule against a single person who dare speak against the narrative in their little echo chamber here.

Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Any at all? I didn’t think so. You are just trying to defend your indefensible position of greed.

I wish the term 'Junior Doctors' would get ditched - it's so unhelpful. People think it means new doctors in their early to mid-20s, but in fact it applies to any qualified doctor below Consultant - which can easily be people who have been qualified for 20+ years!

No doubt I will be accused of trolling but DH - hospital consultant - is paid £117k and works one weekend every 6 months. (Chose his specialism carefully). His private practice brings in the same again. We own 5 houses. His pension is 50% of final salary for life. I am entitled to a chunk of that if he dies first but don't know how much.

We do not need more money.

I do not support the strikes, nor do I think that doctors are underpaid cf. equivalent professions such as law (mine) or accountancy, both of which have an expectation of excess(ive) hours, but neither of which typically pay any overtime. The various overtime and uplifts that are omitted by JD's makes the whole debate a bit disingenuous.

@ElliF yes I do actually, my husband is a hospital consultant so I probably have a better insight than you will ever have . Only greedy person on here is you, indulging yourself online with an abundance of incorrect facts and figures ! Maybe it’s time you got yourself a job as you’re obviously a troll.

From my GP website- average 79k (year 2020/21) average for part time and full time. If I remember correctly, the figure was higher years before, but maybe it's because most of them went part time. Not sure.

My ex-neigbours are junior doctors, they were driving old bangers. Not sure how they're doing now, as they moved out.