Doctors 'paid too much'
Discussion
Says junior doctor
Before I am pounced on by the PH doctors, let me just say that I think it is boll*cks and that comparing the pay of nurses with doctors, who merely earn
an amount comparable with other top professionals, is not relevant.
Telegraph Article
Trust me, doctors are paid too much
By Nick Britten
(Filed: 07/10/2005)
A junior doctor yesterday called for doctors' pay to be reduced into line with that of nurses and other public sector workers, saying that his senior colleagues enjoyed an "opulent" way of life while other hospital staff had to get by on a "piffling" amount.
Mark Jopling, a first-year pre-registration house officer, said doctors allowed themselves to be placed on a "golden pedestal" and were happy to be regarded as "awesome life savers", earning large amounts of money, driving luxury cars and living in grand houses.
The British Medical Association said Dr Jopling's views were "not widely held" among doctors, but he won support from the Royal College of Nursing for "helping expose nurses' poor pay".
Dr Jopling, 24, yesterday accepted that his comments might well upset his senior colleagues. He said: "I may need a new job, possibly as a tea boy. But it is something I believe in and I believe it is right.
"I'm not suggesting that we are paid a pittance, but it should be in line with the amount of work we do."
Dr Jopling left Nottingham University last year and is completing his training in the city's hospitals.
In comments published in the New Statesman, he said he earned a "whopping" £37,000 a year, even though "I am one of the least qualified, least skilled and lowliest paid doctors in my hospital", whose days were spent "searching for missing heaps of patient notes, running errands and chasing up blood test results".
He said: "If I became a consultant, the taxpayer would be sending me home with about £90,000. Were I to prefer a nine-to-five job as a GP, I would be raking in a fat £100,000 - even more, if I played the system well.
"The overstretched NHS budget sets aside enough cash to ensure that the doctors' car park is packed with luxury motors, and we can leave the chaotic communities which throng our hospital for big houses in charming villages."
Doctors, Dr Jopling said, were "quick to justify" their salaries "with a series of compelling arguments: we work hard, we have big responsibilities, we are also well qualified and have to endure a protracted training".
But he added: "Teachers, social workers and other professionals in the public sector work long hours too, however, some of these at home and unrecognised. While people's lives don't depend on their decision, life opportunities and security do. It is unfair that our salaries dwarf theirs. In medicine there has been a long-standing acknowledgment that nurses work hard and are underpaid. A nurse starts on a relatively modest £16,000 and regularly works nights and weekends. It is usually nurses who give patients most support during their stay in hospital.
"If a nurse reaches the very top and becomes a nurse consultant, he or she will just about earn what I do now. This pay inequality does nothing to ease our occasionally stormy relationship."
"Amazingly, no one objects to our pay, but then we hide the numbers so well behind a tangle of pay bands and percentages that it is unlikely that anyone really knows the scale of the opulence."
Dr Jopling criticised the medical press for concentrating on the "clamouring for more while failing to look at high wages, and said the money saved by lowering doctors' pay could be usefully spent elsewhere.
The argument some used about comparing their salary to the private sector was irrelevant. "We are state-funded service providers; salaries that befitted this role would be more appropriate than the present excess." Dr Jopling added: "Could doctors' pay be redistributed to the more stingily paid members of the health professions and other public sector workers to reflect workload, training and responsibility, rather than assumed social standing? Maybe money freed could go towards more drugs, machines or nurses. There are never enough. Alternatively, that extra money could be used to address the social deprivations that the medical profession knows are the cause of so much ill health."
Dr Jopling, from Newport, Shropshire, said such a move would see some doctors "go private, go to Australia and go loudly". But he added that the National Health Service would be left with "doctors whose motivation is caring for their patients, and there are many of those".
A spokesman for the BMA said: "This is one doctor's point of view. Unsurprisingly, it isn't widely held in the medical profession.
"The facts support the case for paying doctors more, not less. The new GP contract pays doctors for raising the quality of patient care they provide."
Josie Irwin, the Royal College of Nursing's head of employment relations, said: "We agree with the author that the starting pay for a nurse is relatively modest when compared with that of public sector graduates.
"It is not unfair to say we are permanently on the cusp of a staff recruitment and retention crisis."
nbritten@telegraph.co.uk
Judging by todays news of a break through in the treatent of cervical cancer they can have every penny availableas far a I am concerned:
on a knowledge and skill per £ basis I think doctors are the best value you will find. The local BMW dealer charges £100 a hour, which is 4 times what a top rate JHO can earn.
. 
timmy30 said:
Judging by todays news of a break through in the treatent of cervical cancer they can have every penny availableas far a I am concerned:
And the link between NHS GPs and pharmaceutical research is???
Precisely. My g/f works in pharmacological research - has more surgical experience than any GP and more academic training under her belt, but she'd make more money working in bloody macdonalds!!
tonyhetherington said:
What's the situation with nurses at the moment; are there too many, or not enough?
Seriously now
That is the key question isn't it.
Things are often back to front in the public sector, they are always talking about what is a 'fair' wage for the job, rather than what is the wage that will ensure they get a sufficient number of qualified staff.
blindswelledrat said:
pr1ck is all i have to say
Before so eloquently refuting his arguments, it might be worth considering that it is widely known that the increase in NHS productivity has severely lagged the massive increase in NHS spending, so £ for £ it has become considerably less efficient whilst consuming considerably more cash.
This man may be acting in effect as a whisle blower alerting the wider public to the scandal that the increase in NHS funding has simply been used up in huge pay rises for vested interests rather than in buying any more drugs, recruiting any more nurses or performing anymore operations.
Just a thought.
That's the reason I ask. Typically, it's economies of scale. We might be talking about people and jobs rather than apples, but the theory is still the same.
All the time people are graduating and becoming nurses, surely wages will not rise?
(I say this with absolutely no knowledge of the industry at all)
All the time people are graduating and becoming nurses, surely wages will not rise?
(I say this with absolutely no knowledge of the industry at all)
lord summerisle said:
Teachers work long hours?
8:45 - 4:00?
I think Nurses are underpaid for their skills and services... specially when you look at the amount of middle manager/beurocrats sucking the life out of the NHS
But contract nurses working via an agency are rather better paid. Upto £50,000 p.a. as I understand it.
I've nothing against doctors, its GP's that are the bain of existence.
"Hi, I seem to have severed my right leg... what would you suggest"
"well... I'll put you on a course of anti-biotics for a week...If it is still a problem, try and make an appointment next month..."
Teachers are also bloody whingers... more holidays than they can shake a stick at, normal hours regardless of what they say, and decent pay.
"Hi, I seem to have severed my right leg... what would you suggest"
"well... I'll put you on a course of anti-biotics for a week...If it is still a problem, try and make an appointment next month..."
Teachers are also bloody whingers... more holidays than they can shake a stick at, normal hours regardless of what they say, and decent pay.
lord summerisle said:
I think Nurses are underpaid for their skills and services... specially when you look at the amount of middle manager/beurocrats sucking the life out of the NHS
Think you've got mixed up ... its the nurses sucking the life out of the doctors most of the time. That's the real reason junior doctors are so tired. Damn nurses.
timmy30 said:
This man may be acting in effect as a whisle blower alerting the wider public to the scandal that the increase in NHS funding has simply been used up in huge pay rises for vested interests rather than in buying any more drugs, recruiting any more nurses or performing anymore operations.
Just a thought.
Before we say whether doctors are overpaid we have to compare them with their contemporaries, who are not teachers or nurses, but other top A level students.
How much would a lawyer earn for similar hours and so on.
We also have to look at the situation in the job market, and I believe there are a shortage of UK trained doctors if I remember rightly.
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