What are the employment prospects for doctors in Tobago? Looks good to me:

https://tntmedical.com/category/job-opportunities/

I doubt there are enough posts for everyone whose threatening they can just pop over to NZ or canada

I don’t know a single person who’s looked and not been able to find one.

Doctors are very expensive to train, which is why so many developed world countries import them from other countries.

The next one that is opening up for GPs is the US. Where the average GP makes roughly three times as much as they do over here.

Skiing holidays don’t stop you crying in the shower before you get ready to go to work. Reduced workload and better support might.

Also on a side note, % wage increases drive a bigger wedge between the rich and poor. It’s a smokescreen to make people think things are fair.

Whilst we add to it, it’s not just medical staff

There are some pretty ropey senior managers in the NHS.

Why would you go and work in the NHS as a Director when you can earn £500k in industry as a Director

The communist dream, eh, IdleJon, everybody should be poor.

Or another way to look at it is that there’s enough money in this country that nobody should be poor and Kramer can still afford his skiing holiday and be paid what he feels he deserves.

@DT78 I maybe just hit £100k FTE if I include employers pension contributions as well.

I know how my sister (a solicitor), my brother-in-law (engineering firm executive), and my brother and sister-in-law (management consultants) work compared to me. All with equivalent qualifications to me, some of which were *much* easier than a medical degree and post graduate exams.

They’re not making critical decisions at the rate that I do, they’re not dealing with the amount of complaints that I am, they work in a better supported system than I am, they have better perks and bonuses than I do, they mostly have shorter days, and they all get paid more than me, some of them considerably so, and they don’t deal with the amount of abuse that I do.

never said the job of a GP was easy, I’m saying I know its hard, but, it is also well paid.

the ‘pension trap’ consultants keep referring to means they are getting more than £40k pa paid into their pension (or has that changed to 60k now?).  Think about it.  Thats more than the national average salary just on their pension…..

comparing to other similar roles isn’t helpful.  you can’t just walk into those jobs, they can’t just walk into yours, no matter how bright you are.

you are stuck with medicine unless you want to take a big risk / drop.

btw I had the grades for medicine, the time to study and cost (as self funded) put me off, so I did law – then ended up in tech.  I look back at that decision and wish I’d done medicine.  You cannot underestimate the value of a guaranteed job for life.  Despite all the doom and gloom I’ll be encouraging my boys to move into medicine

@DT78 my point is that my consultant colleagues are making *much* more than me, even more so now that they’ve got their extra 14% on top of their already (relatively compared to GPs) favourable pay structure.

I’m not sure what their pension trap has to do with me, as I’m not on their pay structure.

And yes, comparing to other similar roles is helpful, that’s the sort of role that we’re competing with to recruit and retain young doctors and get them to become GPs. Yes I’d have to take a pay cut, but more and more trainees are dropping out and going into other professions at earlier stages in their career.

I may also make the point that those people in my family are about a decade behind me in their careers and still enjoying progression, whereas I am not. And they’re already getting paid more for me.

High house prices don’t reflect the cost of building them, it’s just making a small number of people a lot richer.

And that a lot of ‘wealth’ in the UK is tied up in property and not actually contributing to the economy is an argument for property taxes.

And we need to fund councils properly so that, among other things, they can start building adequate amounts of social housing.

But this is a tangent.

The grass is always greener…

And always has been… or is imagined to be.

I left school in 1985. My plan was to complete my RAF twin-trade apprenticeship, serve the minimum time, then go to Saudi where the pay was probably 3x what it was in the UK. It didn’t pan out that way though!

Other friends have emigrated for economic and non-economic reason. Most have ended up returning to the UK.

It’s difficult working in the public sector as you have little immediate control over pay and conditions; and that has to be accepted when we sign up. If people have “enough” money, then that’s great. If they want more, then there are always options. No point getting all wound up because someone else earns more!

They’re not making critical decisions at the rate that I do, they’re not dealing with the amount of complaints that I am, they work in a better supported system than I am, they have better perks and bonuses than I do, they <em style=”box-sizing: border-box; –tw-border-spacing-x: 0; –tw-border-spacing-y: 0; –tw-translate-x: 0; –tw-translate-y: 0; –tw-rotate: 0; –tw-skew-x: 0; –tw-skew-y: 0; –tw-scale-x: 1; –tw-scale-y: 1; –tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; –tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; –tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; –tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246/0.5); –tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;”>mostly have shorter days, and they all get paid more than me, some of them considerably so, and they don’t deal with the amount of abuse that I do.

You are way out of touch if you think high pay in the private sector is a comparative walk in park. If medicine is so hard why not have a go at something else given it’s comparatively easier to earn more money? You might be surprised at how competitive, precarious and cut throat the real world is.

my point is that my consultant colleagues are making *much* more than me, even more so now that they’ve got their extra 14% on top of their already (relatively compared to GPs) favourable pay structure.

i think that depends on the practice. I used to see the accounts for about 20 practices until changing jobs 5 years ago. They had no shortage of cash to share amongst partners as dividends. They also did practice based commissioning schemes to increase revenue but not workload because they saw the patients during normal clinics so effectively reducing the number of gp appointments they offered. All perfectly within the rules.

The advantage many GPs have that their consultant colleagues don’t is that they are also the owners of the practice/ company. As a result they are able to pay themselves outside of paye and use the dividends rates and various other allowances to reduce their personal taxation rates v being employees.

In society, we really don’t value meaningful jobs like medicine, nursing and teaching. Medicine especially requires a huge amount of sacrifice and demands that not many people could deal with. It’s really not easy to get there or continue to cope with it.

The private sector can be cut throat and demanding but from my groups of friends and family across multiple industries, I can’t see how you’d begin to compare them to medicine from the demands they place on you. The people I know who get paid the most, quite frankly astonishing amounts, add the least value to society, especially from a health perspective. Saying that, a lot of things need to improve in the UK work culture, but at least we are ahead of the US in that respect.

If you have to sacrifice a lot and spend a huge proportion of your life to get a particular job, you should be rewarded appropriately. And sacrificing a lot isn’t just doing a degree or two.

Is that right, 6 years on main scale and then another 6 on upper scale going up every other year? Which will get you to ups 3 which will be £49k when the pay rise promised in the summer lands and mine hasn’t yet. Granted you can skip a few pay scales etc if you move around schools and play the game.

Whether it takes 8 yrs or 12, is the quality of the output of the experienced 49K a year teacher (with no additional responsibilities) that different to one with say 4 years earning on over £10k less?  My gut feel is that’s just because it’s always been that way.  (My cynical parent view is that whilst fresh out of training teachers can be clueless, very experienced ones can be jaded/cynical/burnedout/chasing promotion/rehashing old material).

i guess the other anomaly would be that we pay all subjects the same (except for perhaps some initial incentives to get people in for shortage subjects).  If schools struggle for say maths, physics, computing teachers etc – should they attract a premium helping them compete in the job market and perhaps reducing the incentive for those teachers to be promoted out the classroom?

i guess the other anomaly would be that we pay all subjects the same (except for perhaps some initial incentives to get people in for shortage subjects).  If schools struggle for say maths, physics, computing teachers etc – should they attract a premium helping them compete in the job market and perhaps reducing the incentive for those teachers to be promoted out the classroom?

I’ve often thought about this a little bit. Those with Stem degrees that are much more marketable across a range of industries paid the same as say…drama grads.

But (even though I am one of the ones with a Stem degree) I’d be against it. First, what it would do to the staff body as a cohesive team would be huge. It only (just about) works because you have each other’s back. It would be so divisive. Secondly….once you’ve been doing it a while you begin to appreciate the degree subject is a tiny fraction of what makes a good teacher. By a country mile the most important skills are the soft people management ones. The pastoral ones. The charisma ones. The dweeb in chemistry the teaches dull lessons, has no classroom control, with classes that achieve poor results who gets paid more than the English teacher who is the polar opposite but keeps his job because even though he’s paid £10K more you’d still struggle to get a replacement.  That staff room discontent would cost you more in re-recruitment than struggle employing Stem teachers in the current model.

Finally – you couldn’t pay the ‘cheap’ subject teachers any less and get anyone to do the job. So that would mean paying more to the ‘expensive’ ones….and that’s never going to happen.

If I got a pay rise every time I was expected to pick up something I had no knowledge of and no support with I’d have long since retired. That’s just normal in the private sector when you start to get senior.

Convert – interesting, I’m not convinced that the current system doesn’t reward mediocrity which must mean there’s great teachers (in any subject) who resent colleagues who are coasting but getting paid more just because they have been there longer?

A_A – absolutely, it seems that if you’ve stepped up to cover shortage subjects that should be rewarded.  My experience is somewhat different from stumpjon’s in other worlds: when there’s a job nobody else wants to do and your existing staff can help, you either incentivise them upfront or reward them after – if you don’t, someone else will treat them better, but the national salary levels mean natural “market forces” are eliminated in most public sector roles.

If I got a pay rise every time I was expected to pick up something I had no knowledge of and no support with I’d have long since retired. That’s just normal in the private sector when you start to get senior.

When that happens in private sector it adds to your CV which then enables you to move jobs for a pay rise. I’m not sure that option exists in the public sector, in the same way.

Have you practiced medicine as a GP if you’re so sure that it’s not comparatively hard?

Go back and actually read what I said. No one is saying it’s not hard being a GP but it’s not always easy in the private sector conversely.

The private sector on average gets better pay than the public sector, even more so when you correct for qualification level.

We are both outliers of average pay so let’s not go there. I know and recognise I’m in a privileged position pay scale wise. What I’m not doing is constantly referring to my pay scale because being a GP means I deserve to be paid more when you correct for qualification.

They also did practice based commissioning schemes to increase revenue but not workload because they saw the patients during normal clinics so effectively reducing the number of gp appointments they offered. All perfectly within the rules.

As a practice manager of a GP surgery…Eh?