[mh123]

So... news abounds that 'many' GP's now earn 6 figure salaries, and 'some' earn in excess of £250k

Are they worth it?

[Garrett]

What ever there worth more than DJ's.

[PoochJD]

And they're worth far more than any British Football player, too!

[mjn]

How much training does it take to say, "I'll pescribe you some painkillers, and get plenty of rest and/or liquids"

[Mr Cat]

Originally Posted by mjn

Hoe much training does it take to say, "I'll pescribe you some painkillers, and get plenty of rest and/or liquids"

five years and about 20k worth of debt..?

[shahedz]

very strange but as a locum (temporary) a freshly qualified GP can demand up to £100 an hour, a specilist consultant in Neurosurgery for example on the other hand also working in the NHS would struggle to get £65.

when you think about a GP doctor only needs to know basic knowledge in a varierty of feilds, eg peads, dermatology, general Medicine anything complicated gets refferred to a specialist so a relatively young doctor can become one £100 is very steep , when a consultant with decades of experience below his belt in a specialist filed commands much less.

i am not knocking what GPs do and think very highly of them as, members of my family are GPs but i think £100K is way too much!

[pjclark1]

I think you will find your local GP gets about 70k for a 9-5 regular job.
It is the locum GPs that provide the out of hours service that get paid 150K, but that is for night, weekend and holiday cover.
Not really that great a job to do.

[eddidaz]

Looks like one of the hardest jobs in the world to me.

Although a lot of fun if Scrubs is anything to go by

[shahedz]

Originally Posted by pjclark1

I think you will find your local GP gets about 70k for a 9-5 regular job.
It is the locum GPs that provide the out of hours service that get paid 150K, but that is for night, weekend and holiday cover.
Not really that great a job to do.

there are plenty of locum GPs who work morning and afternoon sessions, demanding £100 an hour and even more for out of hours work!

[Jenn]

Depends on the doctor I guess. Mine seems to know less about contraception than I do

[unique]

i suppose if they save peoples lives, then they are worth every penny, or at least to the people who's lives are saved, but then it isn't GPs that save peoples lives is it? it's more ER staff etc and other types of doctors

all that money, PLUS you get loads of female nurses to assist you. can't be bad eh?

[unique]

Originally Posted by Jenn

Depends on the doctor I guess. Mine seems to know less about contraception than I do

*** is contraption?

[PmSonic]

GP's do seem to limit there knowledge to the 'basics' anything more than that & your either sent to a specialist or the hospital.

I'd like to know how much the specialists / consultants / surgions & hospital based doctors earn.. IMHO they're the folks who should be getting the big bucks!

[scouse]

you could argue you though the specialists wouldn't have many patients if the GP's didn't have the required skills to refer to the correct physician...

also GP's have to know a "little" about an awful lot to be able to refer to the correct specialists whereas a specialist can only concentrate on a small portion of the spectrum.

something that hasn't been mentioned is that GP's only get paid a good chunk of their money if targets, that are important to improving nations general health, are met.

edit; i would say though there are some crap gp's out there especially when it comes to mental health and depression, i've seen pretty appalling examples of communication skills which are vital as a doctor

[shahedz]

Originally Posted by pshand

GP's do seem to limit there knowledge to the 'basics' anything more than that & your either sent to a specialist or the hospital.

I'd like to know how much the specialists / consultants / surgions & hospital based doctors earn.. IMHO they're the folks who should be getting the big bucks!

i think, not 100% sure consutlants start at about £62k and go up to £mid 90s in the NHS but they also top up thier pay by working privately a few sessions per week

[chrisw]

Don't bother going to the doctor much cos generally they say the same thing, as quoted above "plenty of rest/fluids and some painkillers" or "you need anti-biotics".

My other half has to go regularly for her 'ladies stuff' but to be honest, you could pay someone £10 an hour to deal with the routine stuff like that.

I think if the doctors provided a better service with a little more attention to detail then £100k a year is fine. But it's so slap dash, it feels more like a fast food joint than a 'surgery' half the time. Suprised they don't ask "do you want fries with that" with every prescription!

[ash]

Yeah I think its worth it, we need them. They work hard to reach that position, 5/6 hard years at uni. And also they will sit from 35-65 in the same office (well most do, unless these new NHS reforms do something) so they have to be "compensated" for that as they still help us.

[GBDG1]

last time i went to the doctor the bugger typed my symptoms onto the computer and read me what it said. However, 100k isnt unreasonible, there are loads and loads of people who earn that... I think it's fair enough... 250k may be pushing it though.

[scouse]

Originally Posted by shahedz

i think, not 100% sure consutlants start at about £62k and go up to £mid 90s in the NHS but they also top up thier pay by working privately a few sessions per week

on the new contract they get 69k basic with the possibility of earning bonus credits (=£££)

plus private work...

[PmSonic]

I didnt know they did private work too?

[GBDG1]

Yah, they get paid vwery well for it too. My friends mother worked in a private hospital, they used to pay Surgeons thousads per operation...

GPs have to do a great amount of administration as well as seeing patients. They have to regularly attend training courses, train other new GPs and such like. Many of my fathers GP friends do not get to leave the surgery before 10pm (keeping computer records up to date, writing out referrals etc.)

Medicine is a very tough career whatever the field - 9-5 is simply not an option. The hours my sister (who has a young child) and father do are horrendous. They are worth every penny.

[GBDG1]

Originally Posted by jakal

GPs have to do a great amount of administration as well as seeing patients. They have to regularly attend training courses, train other new GPs and such like. Many of my fathers GP friends do not get to leave the surgery before 10pm (keeping computer records up to date, writing out referrals etc.)

Medicine is a very tough career whatever the field - 9-5 is simply not an option. The hours my sister (who has a young child) and father do are horrendous. They are worth every penny.

Thankyou Jakal for that completly neutral viewpoint.

I do agree though, the way some people are talking you would think that 100k was a million quid... people who become doctors are talented people, I would say that most could earn 100k in other jobs... so you have to give them an insentive to do the horrible things they have to.

[Steven]

Well if any profession deserves the money it's the 'doctors' of this country

I remember posting a past thread about the perks of MPs which are bigger than the whole year's salary of a GP alone as mentioned here...yet that died without so much a mention

You'd think some are begrudging our doctor's their wages

[shahedz]

i am no begruding them . but i have to say £100k is a lot of money, when you think about all the hard work a nurse does and how little they get paid in comparison it hardly seems fair, i personally think nurses are way underpaid

[Steven]

You're right

The sooner all health professionals in the NHS are paid an above satisfactory income the better

But you see the priority situation is that MPs only feel safe in a jag....

Say when if my cheap shots get old

[Miyazaki]

Our GP friends earn £500 a night each if they do a night shift. They say all they tell the patients is to go immediately to hospital or goto the doctors in the morning.

Easy money or what!

[Chris Muriel]

I'm sure the statistics that I heard on the news were nowhere near the full story.
A balanced news item would at least say what percentage of doctors get (say) £100K or more and what tasks they are doing.
Furthermore, the figures could be inflated by the media by not stating whether this included costs like bricks and mortar, admin and nurse staff salaries etc. etc.
Using cherrypicked numbers, you could easily create a scoop headline ; government reporting and PR does the same - like stating that a particular speed camera cut deaths "by 50% in a year" without stating whether that was from 4 to 2 deaths (statistically insignificant/invalid) or 200 down to 100 deaths (meaning that the camera actually was benefitting mankind).

Chris Muriel, Manchester.

[Astaroth]

Originally Posted by Mr Cat

five years and about 20k worth of debt..?

The 5 years is just for med school to become a junior house officer (which you do for 1 year). You then have to become a house officer, then a registra, then a specialist registra (at which point you decide to become a GP or other) and finally a GP or consultant - typically it is a year or two shorter training to be a GP than a consultant.

Pay wise, for the basic 9-5 shift on NHS money a consultant earns more than a GP however there is more call for out of hours GPs etc than consultants for most specialties.

Given the length and difficulty of the training (I only managed to complete the med school part) I dont begrudge them their salaries. The "problem" with GPs is that they are jack of all trades - they need a fair understanding of almost all illnesses (or at least all but the rarest). Yes a consultant in oncology knows a hell of a lot more about cancer but will be a lot less informed on all the other conditions a GP has to cover.

[alexs2]

One of the things being "buried" in this is of course the fact that the GPs did negotiate themselves a good deal,and the government are still smarting from that,and are prepared to make use of the very small percentage who may indeed be earning over £200k.

It disregards the vast majority who earn much less than this,and only now,thanks to the new contract,are being paid something like what they should be in relation to the expertise and service committments entailed in the job.

A side issue is that of the consultants pay,and remarks made about how productivity has not increased in proportion to the pay increases....the government chose to ignore doctor's representatives who had told them that the vast majority of NHS consultants work greatly in excess of their paid hours,and instead chose the advice of their spin-mongers,who implied that most were on the golf course by midmorning.
Now that consultants are paid by sessions worked(i.e. hours worked),this has also backfired.

It is hard to increase productivity when you were already working those hours in the first place,albeit previously unpaid.