This really baffles me...

correlate pay with productivity is a dangerous slope... just like privatisation

Firing ineffective doctors also looks like privatisation. But this weeds out dangerous and incompetent doctors who put their patients at risk. Your job should not be safe just because you have a medical degree. Patients must come first.

I think correlating pay to performance is the only way to help motivate staff without further complicating the hierarchical structure in the profession. If you're better than your peers, you ask for and get a small pay increase to reflect this. This means hospitals can reward good staff and progress them slightly without the feast and famine issue (you get promoted, big pay rise; then you're stuck on that for years until the next big pay rise). Also, it slows the rate at which doctors need to be promoted to keep them happy--you get a small increase in pay for performance biannually, so you feel less hard done by if you are not promoted year on year.

Let's look at the facts about medicine:

- Thousands of people apply to do it, it is the single most competitive course in the country. Many of these people genuinely want to help people, however many applicants are motivated by the money.
- Only a fractions of applicants will get a place onto the course. The people that get places are not necessarily the ones who are most suited for the job. The ones motivated by money will make less caring doctors and waste government funded training.
- Doctors are still paid 6-figure salaries once they specialise, even though there is such a large supply of people who would do medicine even if it paid alot less.

So why are doctors still paid so much? Basic supply and demand states that when supply increases, price decreases. However the government still pays doctors high salaries even though there are many people not getting places into medicine, who would be willing to do the job without the motivation of money. I know that doctors undoubtedly deserve their wages, but if they were paid less we would only get applicants who want to do medicine for the right reasons.

To be quite honest, doctors deserve to earn a lot more than they currently do..

Their salaries in this country really arent spectacular, im sure there are plenty of docs who dont even make 6 figures. In america they earn a lot more

That's also because on average they graduate with a quarter of a million dollars of unprotected private debt though. At least we don't have that to contend with!

University education in America is seriously messed up.

EDIT: In terms of fees, rather than content.

That's also because on average they graduate with a quarter of a million dollars of unprotected private debt though. At least we don't have that to contend with!

Now fees are 9 thousand a year and considering some degrees are six years long if you plus factor the living expenses for cities like London after the exchange rate it won't be far from that.

I've heard the opposite...that soon 60% of all doctors will be Consultants

...so rather than every 35 year old with a CCT being a Consultant

I think correlating pay to performance

Anyone who enters medicine for the money is a complete fool. 5 years to finish, 2 years to train, 3-5 more years to specialize....10-12 years later you actually start your career. Even at this point, you aren't making much and your first priority is paying your loans back.

In all that time you could've just done business and made a ton of cash...especially if you had the grades that med school require...getting into business school would've been a breeze anyways.

So yes, don't do medicine for the money, you will just realize what a tool you are 15 years later.

Where've you heard that? It's pretty much the opposite of what I've heard...

60% of all doctors will become GPs. Consultant jobs are going to become less plentiful - as consultants retire trusts aren't going to re-recruit to those posts, instead they'll create specialty doctor posts for which they can pay considerably less.



Having a CCT doesn't make you a consultant, it just means you can apply for a consultant job. If there are less consultant posts on offer then more of these CCT-holders will become specialty doctors or go abroad.

It's not as easy as that. You don't just breeze in start a business and start earning millions.

I clearly said "in that time", indicating the 10-12 or so years that it takes to become a fully trained doctor. I know business doesn't mean insta-millionaire.

...apparently more junior doctors intend to become specialists than ever before...so they were predicting a 60% rise in 'consultant level' jobs

That makes no sense. Just because more junior doctors might intend on becoming specialists doesn't mean they will or can. Trusts aren't going to increase the number of specialty training posts just because more people want to do it, and they certainly aren't going to create posts that aren't needed.

There's currently bottlenecks at ST3 level and then at CCT level (though less so). As consultant posts are left vacant, there will be a relative rise in specialty doctor posts - I can't understand where this 60% rise in 'consultant-level jobs' is going to come from...?

Doctors don't really contribute anything to the economy, they leech off it, so their pay should be pretty low.