The pay of doctors is an illusive game of smoke and mirrors.
Nobody really wants to tell you how much doctors are paid.
And although the information is publicly available online,
it's really difficult to find.
The highest paid GP in the UK reportedly earns
over 600k pounds!
And private consultants on Harley Street in London are supposedly earning
over one million pounds a year!
My name is Kiran. I am a Junior Doctor and a Comedian
and I have been working as a Doctor for four years post graduation.
I am currently training to be a GP and I earn
just under 50k pounds a year.
Today we are looking at the highest earning doctors in the UK.
Who are these guys? And how much are they really earning?
First, let's look at how doctors get paid in the UK.
There are two main systems. The N ational Health Service
and then the Private Sector.
The NHS is funded by people's taxes
and the Private Sector is funded by insurance companies
and people paying privately to get things done quicker.
If someone needs a knee replacement on the NHS,
they might be waiting months and months and months for that to happen.
Whereas in the private sector, it might happen in the next few weeks.
As a consequence though, for the end user,
you have to pay to receive that quicker service.
You might pay monthly or yearly for insurance.
And when it comes to the time that actually you need your knee surgery,
the insurance will pay out. And it will be covered by them.
Well, you might not have insurance
and actually, you have gone to the NHS,
you have seen the waiting list is so long
and you have decided it's worth your while just to pay the extra
and to get it done quicker.
This can end up being really expensive.
I mean even scans can cost 1000s of pounds (but it's still better than America)
Emergency treatment in the NHS is done really quickly.
So generally, it doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay
if you have a burst appendix that needs surgery,
that will get done straight away.
If you have a hip fracture and you need a hip replacement,
that will be done straight away!
So, that's one of the great things about NHS.
It's just the elective things that can actually wait
to be done that can go to the private sector.
Make sense?
So the basic pay for doctors.. (I am about to read this
cause I don't know these numbers)
and I'll link the document down below.
An FY1, so a new doctor is on 28.8k pounds a year.
FY2 doctor - 33k pounds a year.
CT1 or St1 - 39k pounds a year.
And then it goes up and up until you are a senior registrar
adding 53k pounds a year.
Basic salary.
So my basic salary, is quoted at 39k pounds a year.
But you might know if you have seen my other video
that my actual salary is around 50k pounds a year.
So obviously, there's a discrepancy there.
The reason for that is cause it's very misleading.
Actually there's other things that are added to pay
There are part of routers that you have no choice of
that would increase this pay.
So you get paid extra for doing night shifts..
You get paid extra for doing weekends..
You get paid extra for doing out of hour shifts and this premium
adds up and equates to
another 25% usually on top of your salary.
This is one of they reasons why it's so
difficult to work out how much doctors are being paid
because the pay scales are just so variable.
So if you check out this graph of FY1 pay scale,
you will actually see there that
an FY1 doctor could earn upto 44k pounds.
If they are working their max, doing a lots of out of hours,
doing lots of weekends, they can theoretically earn that much.
When you have finished your medical training and you have
done 5 or 6 years as a registrar,
you become a consultant..
And consultants are the top doctors that are being paid the most.
The basic salary for a new consultant
on the 2003 contract,
is 82k pounds.
So that's the starting salary. And each year, it goes up and up.
But as we talked about before, there's lot of supplementary extras
that you can have, that will increase this pay.
All of this information is freely available online
All you have to do is search for it and request it.
And if someone previously requested it.. that info will be available.
So, someone recently asked, "What are the highest paid male and female doctors
in the NHS, in the UK?"
And I actually found the answer to this question.
and I'll put the link down below again.
The top three highest paid male doctors in the UK
are on 511k pounds, 504k pounds and 449k pounds.
So the highest paid NHS male doctors
are on half a million pounds a year
which is a lot when you consider that the basic salary
of a starting consultant is 83k pounds.
The highest paid female consultants
are on 355k pounds, 291k pounds and 288k pounds a year.
So the other thing to note there is that
there's a massive discrepancy between the pay of male doctors
and female doctors at this top-end.
Now, it doesn't say what specialties they are in
or what they did to earn this extra pay.
But that is a crazy amount considering that's just NHS pay
and wasn't the private sector at all!
What about GPs? How much do they get paid?
According to the BMA, GPs get paid between 60k and 91k pounds.
But being a GP partner is actually more like running a business.
So there's scope to earn way more.
The Sun newspaper... (I know not a very reliable source)
--but they requested some information from NHS digital
about the highest paid GPs.
And the found that the highest paid GP in the UK,
was being paid over 600k pounds a year!
With over 18 GPs earning at least 300k pounds a year
and almost 90% GPs actually earning less
than a 100k pounds a year.
So, although, the top-end are earning a lot,
90% of GPs were still earning less than 100k pounds a year!
What about private medical or surgical consultants?
Now, this is where the real big bucks comes in medicine
-is private practice in secondary care.
When you get paid per operation for example
and you are a really well known, over subscribed surgeon,
these prices can go up and up.
Talking about subscribing,
if you are new, make sure you are subscribed to the channel.
... That was quite smooth!
A reporter in the observe listed some standard fees for surgical consultants.
These were - 2,170 pounds for a heart bypass;
2,140 pounds to remove a brain tumor;
and 825 pounds for hip replacement.
This report was over 20 years old.
So you can only imagine that the price of these things have gone up today.
The report also suggested that over 20 UK doctors
were on... Wait for it..
were on 1 MILLION POUNDS per year before tax!
It's important to be realistic
and then not all private hospital consultants are on these crazy figures.
But it is insane to see what they are on at the top-end!
Who are the highest paid specialties?
And which doctors actually are earning those big bucks?
Let me tell you...
This research paper from the general of the royal society
of medicine listed the highest pay specialties in the UK.
Bare on mind, this is over twenty year old.
But they looked at their tax returns to work out that, number one,
was plastic surgery with the mean income
of 217k pounds;
trauma and orthopaedic surgery with a mean income of 177k pounds
and neurosurgery with a mean income of 158k pounds pay year.
Be clear that they are mean incomes.
So that's not just the top-end. That's the average income
for a consultant in the private sector
in that specialty.
And that's one of the reasons that plastic surgery, orthopaedic and neurosurgery
are so so popular!
Following this was ENT, cardiology, ophthalmology and dermatology
and I'll link the whole thing down below if you want to see the full list.
Bare in mind that, again, this report is
old and some of these incomes will have changed now
and I would have thought, would have become a lot more.
What is that actually takes to become a hospital consultant
and to earn the big buck!
Looking at it from the start, you need to go to medical school for five years.
You need to do two years of foundation training,
two years of core surgical training
followed by another six years of
specialty training to become a consultant.
And even at that point, you are not earning the big bucks.
You have just become a consultant.
You need to get more practice in the NHS
before you can move up to the private sector and build up
your patient list.
And even when you are in the private sector,
you need to work for a number of years
to build up your name, to then get people coming out of their way
to find you and to have their surgery done by you.
So it's not something that happens over night.
It's not something that's very easy to happen to a person..
And we also have to appreciate the work that goes into
actually getting to that level.
I hope you enjoyed this video guys.
That was the highest paid doctors in the UK.
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