Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[albitz]

Yep,private sector employees sell their services to an employer and can withdraw services and possibly face the consequences.Public sector workers are public servants and paid from the publics wages to serve them.I dont believe they should have the right to strike.
If I am misinformed about hospital doctors salaries then I apoligise.But I find it difficult to believe that the upper limit is £75k tbh,but am willing to be proved wrong.
I take it from your post that you are a consultant D ?

I would add,Im not anti NHS, far from it.I just think that in certain areas it is in dire need of a good shake up and bringing into the real world.There are of course many good commited people working in it,and they are most likely more frustrated by the whole thing than people like me are.

[mantahatch]

There is a lot of waste in the NHS. A good example being NHS logistics. I am sure that their prices can be significantly reduced, but getting rid of them is impossible. Managers seem incapable of cutting anything but clinical budgets, which unsurprisingly is what needs to be increased.

Would be interesting to hear more. What part of the NHS is it? Why are you moving etc?

Albs:
The doctors strike was not for pay packets as you put it, but with regards to the pension scheme. Surely as a working group, do you think they have no rights?
All emergency services still continued to function, as did all cancer services. It was only elective (i.e. planned) work that was cancelled. When the bloody tube drivers strike, nothing works, yet NHS employees who work in central london are expected to get to work by any means possible. For me that was cycling 9 miles to work, not much fun I can tell you.
A consultants salary is 75k pa. The very same tube drivers are getting 60k pa? It takes about 12 years of extremely hard graft to get to being a consultant in the NHS and the pay packet is only 15k more than a tube driver? I mean seriously? The costs of medical indemnity and memberships to keep going run into thousands per year. Yet they are just above a "TFL tube driver"!

And lets take the olympics as an example. Tube/bus/TFL staff are all upset because of the increased workload during the Olympics and want a bigger bonus! Lets look at doctors/nurses/allied health professionals who work in the same geographical area. Clearly their work load will also significantly increase. Do they get a bonus? No! Do they get any pay supplements? No! Is trying to get to work mean leaving home even earlier due to the increased number of commuters? Yes! Has any provision been made to help with transport during the Olympics? No!

As a group of people who have to work extremely hard, be as careful as possible due to the fact that peoples lives are on the line; doctors/nurses don't seem to get any rights and for a day of protest that happens once in a very long time (remember the last time it happened?) everyone wants to give it the most negative spin that they can.

Go on then, pay the bloody politicians/bankers/actors/footballers more. Surely they deserve they 150k + that they earn.

Rant over.

With all due respect D, how many days work do they do for that 75K ?

Last I heard they worked about 2 days per week for the NHS. and then 2 days in private hospitals. It would not be so bad if they where paid pro rata for the hours they work but no they get the full money.

If I have been informed badly please feel free to put me right. The truth would be nice to know.

You most definitely have been misinformed. None of my colleagues do any private work of any sort. Full time in the NHS is 60 hrs per week plus weekends on call, long days etc. Its not as easy as you make it out to be. Plus if you have to stay back longer because someone is sick; you do not get paid overtime. Probably the only job where no one gets paid overtime. In fact, the EU working time directive suggests you stop working and leave! But how can anyone with any moral obligation do that. I constantly stay back beyond my prescribed working hours because some one isn't well/deteriorates acutely. For e.g. this Friday gone by. I was supposed to finish at 5pm, I left work at 6:45pm. Do I get anything for it? Only the satisfaction that I have tried to help someone out.

Fair enough D I stand corrected. Only thing I would add is I don't get overtime pay either, and I do quite a bit of it. Thanks for putting me right 

[D]

No Albs, the upper limit is not 75k. After 6 years of med school (with a god knows how large student loan hanging over your head), 1 yr as a houseman, 3 years as a senior house officer, then 5 to 7 years of being a registrar, plus 2-3 yrs of research (optional, but most people do it). Thats 15 - 19 years of training to be a consultant. During these years you earn between 20 - 40k (slow increments to the top), plus a small supplement due to hours of being on call. Then you start at 75k. If you are willing to do more than the usual hours then you can get more, but who in their right minds wants to be taking on even more work in exchange for a hit on their family? So most people compromise and go for a fair amount of extra work and settle at about the 90k figure. But remember this carries with it a 40% tax and 11%NI, X% pension, professional indemnity insurance, royal college membership, specialty membership, journals and publication membership all of which costs significant amounts of money.

For eg: just one of the 5 journal/online databases I subscribe to is uptodate https://www.uptodate.com/store. Have a look at the annual membership costs, yup $500, its not a mistake/typo.

I am not struggling to make ends meet, but I am not rolling in it either.

Surgeons make a good proportion more. Possibly due to private work, I am not exactly certain. But then you exchange your evenings and weekends for it. Its quality of life versus income.

GP's seem to make money disproportionate to levels of training, on calls and working hours. I am sure they would disagree, but they generally start at 100k+ easily. And I think this needs to be addressed.

[D]

Yep,private sector employees sell their services to an employer and can withdraw services and possibly face the consequences.Public sector workers are public servants and paid from the publics wages to serve them.I dont believe they should have the right to strike.
If I am misinformed about hospital doctors salaries then I apoligise.But I find it difficult to believe that the upper limit is £75k tbh,but am willing to be proved wrong.
I take it from your post that you are a consultant D ?

I would add,Im not anti NHS, far from it.I just think that in certain areas it is in dire need of a good shake up and bringing into the real world.There are of course many good commited people working in it,and they are most likely more frustrated by the whole thing than people like me are.

Could not agree more.

[OOMV6]

With all due respect D, how many days work do they do for that 75K ?

Last I heard they worked about 2 days per week for the NHS. and then 2 days in private hospitals. It would not be so bad if they where paid pro rata for the hours they work but no they get the full money.

If I have been informed badly please feel free to put me right. The truth would be nice to know.

Salaries cannot be based only on how many days work are done. E.g. what is done in those days, what training is required, how many people wanna do that job, experience, track record etc etc etc

I have worked with many people who do a "40 hour week". No they don't. They are present for 40 hours

I assume you have never worked on production line then  Or on a building site, A building site destroyed my health thanks to very long hours and constant work, you got about 30 minutes for lunch, if you wanted a morning cup of tea or a fag you had it while working. Are you really saying I and many others don't work in the time we are at work. I still work many hours, in a not quite so physical role, I get no tea breaks and 15 minutes for lunch if I get lunch at all. I do it for my customers and to keep me in a job, how many doctors/consultants work to keep there customers happy ? The difference is I lose my job if customers go elsewhere. How many doctors are threatened with the sack even if they don't perform.

I am sure doctors and consultants "work" really hard in there nice consulting rooms, Yes I am well aware of salary differentials. Does not make it right though.

You assume wrong. I have worked in catering, then finance. Now I run my own home renovations company. So, yes, I have worked on a building site. I do most days.

[albitz]

No Albs, the upper limit is not 75k. After 6 years of med school (with a god knows how large student loan hanging over your head), 1 yr as a houseman, 3 years as a senior house officer, then 5 to 7 years of being a registrar, plus 2-3 yrs of research (optional, but most people do it). Thats 15 - 19 years of training to be a consultant. During these years you earn between 20 - 40k (slow increments to the top), plus a small supplement due to hours of being on call. Then you start at 75k. If you are willing to do more than the usual hours then you can get more, but who in their right minds wants to be taking on even more work in exchange for a hit on their family? So most people compromise and go for a fair amount of extra work and settle at about the 90k figure. But remember this carries with it a 40% tax and 11%NI, X% pension, professional indemnity insurance, royal college membership, specialty membership, journals and publication membership all of which costs significant amounts of money.

For eg: just one of the 5 journal/online databases I subscribe to is uptodate https://www.uptodate.com/store. Have a look at the annual membership costs, yup $500, its not a mistake/typo.

I am not struggling to make ends meet, but I am not rolling in it either.

Surgeons make a good proportion more. Possibly due to private work, I am not exactly certain. But then you exchange your evenings and weekends for it. Its quality of life versus income.

GP's seem to make money disproportionate to levels of training, on calls and working hours. I am sure they would disagree, but they generally start at 100k+ easily. And I think this needs to be addressed.

If GP,s are earning much more than consultants then I would fully agree.Im no expert but it sounds a bit like a waitress earning more than a chef.Doesnt make sense.