What should they be paid?

I agree Suedonim
50 years ago women were discriminated against when they applied to medical school. Only a certain number of places could be allocated to them.
That’s been overcome and now there are more women students than men.
But until it’s recognised that women need flexibility and reasonably family-friendly hours, there will continue to be the wastage you describe.

Candelle maybe the doctor situation could be improved if their working conditions were improved. In Scotland only about half of doctors are still working for the NHS four years after they graduated! They move into less stressful careers, go abroad or just stop being doctors.

GabriellaG54 teachers on a 4.5 day week!! It's not that simple.

My friend is a full time teacher. Never leaves school before 6pm. Always in before 8.30am. Every night she has paperwork to do, marking, planning. Then there is the expected extra curricular often on a Saturday morning. All without extra payment.

Yes there are longer holidays but not as much as people would think. Back into school for at least 3 weeks before school starts back. Ongoing meetings over the summer.

Also, family holidays can only be taken at peak rates. Impossible to get time off in term time, especially at short notice.

Thank you Candelle for your totally accurate assessment of the situation regarding GPs.

Thanks, janainsworth!

All v true.

Apparently the public is happy for this awful situation to continue and to be treated by an exhausted doctor.

To be fair, I have no solution for a quick fix (I feel taking doctors from other, even less well supplied countries for the UK is immoral) but as you mention, training is indeed a long process and even were there a doubling of medical students (there was a move to an initial four-year degree course some years ago), it takes six years for a rookie GP to emerge, four more years of training and far more before they really know what they are doing! Experience is invaluable but we are losing some of our older GP's through stress, being completely fatigued and demoralised.

Our current Government seems blithely uninterested in the NHS and indeed is piling on pressure to reduce costs further when there is no slack to give. Fewer medical students are taking the GP career route as they see in their training, the demands put upon the average GP. What will happen within a few years with a rising population is anyone's guess.

Oops, I have gone off piste again. I think that GP's are worth far more than they are paid now (but so too are other professions) (in the States, although the student finance debt is larger than here, an average GP will earn several hundred thousand dollars pa with almost office working hours and one, who found out my family member's salary and working day just sat and laughed for several minutes!).

I am never jealous, even of a CEO on millions, as if you can obtain it, do so but please don't bash GP's, their pay and particularly their working hours - I bet you wouldn't/couldn't sustain it!

Hello PamelaJ1

Apologies, it was a bit late but no, I am not cross with most Gransnetters who did seem to value their doctors and our NHS. It is just the few who believe all the '£100,000 pa' rubbish and have no idea that their GP leaves work exhausted each day, day after day.

They probably don't understand that our NHS is in crisis with creeping privatisation (hearing test anyone? - go to Specsavers (although currently still NHS funded but how long before it is not). Many services are being outsourced and it is a gentle hop before those have to paid for by the end user. Need some medications? Go to your local chemist (as these are no longer available on the NHS).

As to other professions, I absolutely agree. Gravediggers are one. Where would we be if they stopped work?!

Another family member used to teach (but was demoralised because of all the bureaucracy and fed-up supplementing paper and crayons to her class out of her own meagre salary).

Teacher-bashing is out of favour at the moment but if they have a pay-rise, watch it all flourish again. Teachers also work long hours (and not the 8.30-3.15 pm which is trotted out. Their half-term holidays are frequently taken up with report writing and the summer break is fore-shortened by the necessary tasks of coming in early to prepare for the next term/year.

I know lawyers who, when preparing for trial, work evenings and weekends too and I am sure many other, less qualified people work hard too. I was reading of zero-hour contracts where 'employees' (I am unsure if they are employed or have a contract) are called in at extremely short-notice to work sometimes very long days. All of this is unacceptable and I really feel for everyone and glad I am out of the workplace now! It was definitely easier in my day with less stress and expectation.

The OP's question was 'what should they be paid?' but unless we take the route to communism there should be an open-market place where individuals are paid according to their 'worth'. Without gravediggers, or rubbish-collectors, we would soon grind to a halt but should they, for example be paid double their salary? Should a CEO be paid millions? 'Worth' is a very tricky word. It is all a minefield!

Pamela to be fair to Candelle, the OP suggested that GP’s salaries were halved and moaned that many of them work part-time. It made me cross too, even though I have no family links to the medical profession. I just know how many years it takes to qualify as a GP and have some idea of how demanding a job it it is.
Someone else demanded that all GPs work full-time.
My view is that when it takes 11 or 12 years to qualify, and that someone comes out of university with a £60K student loan to repay, and their starting salary is £22K, they should be free to work as many or as few hours as they choose.
A few years ago, the Government demanded that GPs publish their salaries in their surgeries. None of the doctors at our surgery earned more than £65K.

Candelle, why are you cross? With us? I would say that the majority of responders on here are full of admiration for all the medical profession.
It’s just that others are also important.

I have a GP in my family - work begins at 7.30 am and they are not home until 9.00 pm or frequently later (with a twenty-minute commute). There is no lunch break (or often, time to go to the loo).

Additionally, there are 'phone calls re. patients (often mental health or child protection related) during the weekend/late in the evening, five weekends away from home spent considering future plans for the surgery (no time during the working week) and several weekends undertaking 'flu jabs etc.

There are committees (necessary for the health service to run smoothly) to chair/attend and on and on.

This GP reckoned that averaged out, they earn less than the average wage per hour.

Why do they do it? Good question! They care about us and want the very best for their patients. They could do without the 'doctor-bashing' that comes round every few years.

I can assure you that the oft quoted £100,000 per annum is a newspaper-led story.

To be accurate, there are a handful of GP's who can attain this salary and they earn it for much out of hours work in rural communities where they are the only source of health care, thus they do the job of GP, hospital, district nurse etc - everything - at any hour or the day or night.

If the press are not 'doctor-bashing' they are 'teacher-bashing' (but only when there's not much news about...).

We, as patients, are waiting longer for appointments because many of us use our GP surgeries incorrectly, (we used to visit a few times a year and now it is treble that). We know our 'rights' and demand to be seen when we could visit the local chemist. The pressures with paper-work are incredible (did you know that each time a child is at home when sick and not attending school, the school expects a GP to produce an evidential 'sick-note'?) and the Government is reducing payments to surgeries for treatments (do you expect a GP to pay for your UTI test from their own pocket if not Government funded?) which hardly helps the situation.

Do you know that the Government has messed around with GP's pensions, so what was promised has disappeared? There would be riots and strikes in other sectors were this to happen.

Give these hard-working, dedicated caring people a break.

(Can you tell I'm cross...?!)

To my mind, there are so many socially and materially unproductive (but often highly paid) jobs now, which never existed before and which the world would probably not miss : marketing executives, public relations officers, personal trainers, image consultants, brand managers, event organisers, telemarketers, "chuggers", marketing psychologists and lobbyists (the last two being not only pointless but, in my opinion, manipulative and unethical), etc, etc.

It seems to me the jobs that are absolutely essential or which we would find it very inconvenient to do without - such as farmers, engineers, teaching assistants, cleaners, gardeners, carers, child care workers, nurses, street cleaners, dustmen, factory workers, bus, train and coach drivers, laboratory technicians, shop workers, paramedics, fire officers, emergency call centre operators, etc, etc, often have lower status and are under paid.

I think one of the reasons the modern world has become more and more obsessed with the notion that making money (by almost whatever means) is the most important thing; thus year on year profits must continue to increase. Therefore all sorts of strategies must be used to persuade people that they must buy stuff they don't need - and to keep buying it in order to ensure that our economy is "healthy". This calls for a whole range of marketeers - from marketing strategists, psychologists, brand managers, etc etc, to more niche specialties such as food photographers.

A very mixed up world - on the one hand being urged to keep buying goods and services in order to maintain "growth". On the other, being frowned upon for over-consumption of valuable resources, leading also to disposal problems - both of which damage the environment.

I think we agree that workers should be rewarded according to their usefulness.
To a certain degree but I do think that those who have worked hard for years for their qualifications should be rewarded accordingly.

I don't particularly want the surgeon who operates on me to be paid on a par with a refuse collector.
Both essential jobs I agree but one has taken many years of training to achieve their level of expertise.

GabriellaG54 it might depend on the type of nursing but I have to say, the nurses on the orthopaedic ward I was in for nine days worked their socks off. It was such physical work, too, as only one patient on the six bed ward was mobile, everyone else had to be moved and, apart from me, turned in bed etc. They were 12 hour shifts and the doctors were often there when I went to sleep and the same ones there when I woke up in the morning.

I don't think long hours are good for anyone. I had to wait four days for my operation. I could have had it earlier but it would have taken place late at night. I told the surgeon I'd rather he went home and had some rest before he stuck his scalpel into me!

Watermelon, I half agree with you but if we are talking basic survival then food producers/providers should be high on the list along with those who provide shelter, water and warmth.

CPS barristers getting paid at what works out at less than minimum wage... Definitely need to be paid more considering the hours worked, nature of work etc.
I pay more for a days childcare than some CPS barristers will earn for a full day a court.

Nobody has agreed with my suggestion that public toilet cleaners should by highly paid.

SueDonim
When I was a student nurse I worked nights 8-8, 10 on and 5 off but we had to sign in for breakfast and then change into clean uniforms before going to lectures and sign in there too.
Only then could we go to bed and rooms were checked to see we were there.
Days were 8 on 2 off. 7-7 with 45 mins for lunch.
Believe me, we worked harder than nurses do now and wards were immaculate, much cleaner than now.
I earned £11 pm...after live-in, pension and NI deductions in my first student year and there were no fat nurses.

Saggi

As a double income family earning around £60k with school holidays thrown in and teachers pensions too, your daughter and partner are doing better than ok, especially as they have you to do babysitting duties.

Of course refuse collectors should earn a decent and fair wage, as should everyone who works in my opinion, but I’m the last person who would try to equate every single job’s worth, it’s just too difficult. And pretty much every job is worthwhile, people do not have to be on the front line of the services to be doing a worthwhile job.

However as my daughter is a GP I do have something to say about the pay of GPs. I have said this before on another thread and I will say it again here. My daughter spent twelve years training to do her job. Six years at university, two years doing F1 and F2, and a further four years working and training to be a GP. If anyone else wants to tell me she is not worth what she earns given her high level of training, I want to know why she is considered to be worth less than she earns. She does NOT earn £100,000 a year, she only works two days a week in her Practice, and one day a week engaged in some advisory/information dissemination, a necessary post due to reorganisation demanded by the government. When working in the Practice, she frequently works twelve hour days, despite having three very young children, twins of five years old and a baby a year and a half. Do not tell me my daughter is not worth her pay, she is!

Definitely higher pay for nurses ,paramedics and ambulance staff. They are the ones who work very long hours and are ,more and more, subject to attack and abuse.My SIL works in A and E as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner,after a great deal of extra study. He has been attacked whilst just trying to do his job. Doctors,Consultants and Surgeons do a great job,but do receive a more realistic salary.

I think we agree that workers should be rewarded according to their usefulness.
If, post-apocalypse, we had to form a new society, we would need most of the traditional skills - builder, farmer, teacher, nurse but could manage well without politician, banker and tech support.

I've just spent the day with two newly-qualified medics who start their new jobs next month. Here's an example of a typical schedule. Four days of 8am-6pm shifts, two days of 8am-8:30pm shifts, four night shifts then, finally, four days off before it all begins again. They'll earn £22,000 for that.

Willa, so do we. It’s called council tax.

So many responses, it takes so much time to read them all. Don't know if anyone suggested this one:

Here in the US, seniors (most on fixed incomes) must still pay (exorbitant, ever escalating) property taxes on their homes. Most have worked hard for years to own a home and have invested a good part of their life savings on said homes. It's not uncommon for seniors to become homeless due to unpaid property taxes.

I have repeatedly suggested to lawmakers that seniors, (age 65 or over) who actually dwell in their own homes, be exempt from paying property taxes on said homes.

I wouldn't like to teach some of the kids today. You're not allowed to box their ears !

Hear Hear couldn’t agree more 62 in November and then another 4 years to wait after that, unless they move it again!