LMSC There must be reasons why churn rates are very high amongst teachers and doctors in the country, even after those breaks. Money is just one factor.
Doctors get six weeks annual leave. The exciting thing is that we can’t necessarily take it all. I have had three friends of mine have their annual leave request declined for their own weddings, despite applying six months in advance. You’re more likely to be able to get time off for a funeral but it’s not a given.
The NHS is running on the goodwill of the staff who work in the organisation. Doctors don’t get paid overtime, yet I haven’t met a single one who does not routinely stay at least an hour or more late every day to finish their work and look after their patients.
The other issue is that doctors get paid pretty poorly for the work they do and the qualifications they need to do that work. Yes they get paid more than the average salary, but the job is more demanding than the average job and takes many years of study in order to be able to do it. You leave university with a lot of debt, and then have to take further, expensive post-graduate qualifications and exams. Compare the salary of a lawyer (three year degree) with that of a medic (six year degree) with 8-10 years’ experience. The lawyer will be taking home almost double (from an average job search website this averages £120k for the lawyer vs £68k for the medic), with no compulsory night shifts, no weekends, no juggling the endless risk of being sued and the fact that if you don’t get things right 100% of the time someone could be seriously harmed or die.
As a junior doctor, so after your three or four As at A-level, five or six years at medical school and passing your finals, you get paid around £14 an hour. You have compulsory night and weekend shifts, and you could be asked to work anywhere in the country. You also have to move location for your training every few months, meaning it is very difficult to settle and have a family. You continue as a ‘junior’ doctor all the way until you have completed your specialty training and qualify as a GP or consultant. For a GP this takes five years, for a consultant it depends on specialty, but can be anything from five up to ten years depending on what you do. As a more experienced junior doctor, for example a senior registrar, you are paid a bit more, around £28 an hour. For this princely sum you are quite literally running the hospital at night when on-call. Often as the only medical registrar there because there are not enough doctors on the rota as the hospitals are trying to save money due to budget constraints and everything is run on the absolute minimum number of staff possible. Twelve hours where every problem is your problem and you have to see every new patient admitted, lead any crash calls (heart attacks/anaphylaxis/respiratory arrest/anyone trying to die) thrombolyse patients (try to get rid of their blood clot if they have had a stroke) as well as deal with any issues raised by any more junior clinicians/nurses etc. I wouldn’t wish a medical night shift on anyone. It is bloody hard.
Then when you get home the papers are telling you how much of a money-grabbing tw@t you are and that you are going out of your way to harm patients (thanks Daily Mail). There is so much vitriol directed towards medics by the press and government it really grinds you down. Due to years and years of funding cuts and salary cuts, the NHS and my colleagues working in it have very little left to give. We should want our doctors to be the best and brightest our universities can offer. The problem if if you consider the responsibilities you have as a medic with the remuneration package and the impact on your mental health, and compare that to the equivalent role in law, finance, business or politics, it’s hard to see why you would put yourself through a career in medicine. Suicide rates and alcoholism are far higher in medics than the national average and I can understand why.
It’s an absolute disgrace and I am really angry about it.
Sorry to rant.
