"The pay has gone down, the jobs have become harder, and doctors are leaving."
That's the stark message from one North East-based junior doctor, and comes amid what's been called the NHS's busiest ever winter and following a shocking new poll showing that a massive 40% of junior doctors plan to leave the NHS as soon as they can find an alternative.
Dr Martin Whyte, a paediatric registrar working in Sunderland, told ChronicleLive how young colleagues were feeling the pinch of the cost-of-living increases - and fed up of having their pay dwindle compared to inflation since 2008. Dr Whyte is also deputy chair of the British Medical Association's (BMA) northern regional junior doctors committee.
The BMA is set to ballot its members from January 9 over whether to take industrial action. Some 45,000 junior doctors will be balloted in the row over pay, with the union warning that pay has fallen by more than a quarter in real terms since 2008/09.
A survey conducted by the union found two-fifths of the junior doctor workforce were looking for the exit door.
Dr Whyte said this was due to the combination of falling pay set against the job becoming more and more pressured. He said: "To some extent in medicine you can never do the same job twice. You are always changing, gaining more experience. But when you talk to other doctors, you become aware that the same jobs are getting progressively harder.
"In many ways it's simple. The pay has gone down, the jobs have become harder, and doctors are leaving."
He said that while doctors were better paid than many, the high debt and costs associated with being a young junior doctor meant more than might be imagined have been struggling in light of rocketing inflation over the past year. Another BMA poll suggested 45% of junior doctors had struggled to meet mortgages or rent in the past year.
Dr Whyte added: ""I think everyone appreciates that doctors are paid more than the average salary, but across the whole country we have seen the sharp increase in the cost-of-living - and doctors, especially those at the start of their careers, are not immune to that.
"Junior doctors now have graduated what can be more than £80,000 in debt. They've been surviving on credit cards in their last year at university. Then they have external exam fees and accreditations as well.
"Since 2008, we have had year-on-year sub-inflation pay rises. We have become about 28% worse off than we would have been back then."
A common exit route for doctors disillusioned with the NHS is to move abroad, and Dr Whyte said he felt this had become more common. He continued: "There's this awareness that you are being paid half as much here as you would be in Ireland or in Australia.
"When I used to speak to medical students or new junior doctors they would have asked things like 'I really want to do cardiology what do I need to do?'. But nowadays the most common question is how do I emigrate. They are burnt out, they are fed up, and thinking it's not worth it any more."
The BMA survey found that a third of the 4,500 junior doctors asked were planning to work in another country in the next year.
BMA chair of council, Professor Phil Banfield, said: “The situation is severe. The health service will simply not be able to cope. For decades the NHS was the envy of the world. But without our doctors’ expertise, the country will get sicker."
He said the union would "not accept impoverished healthcare for our nation".
Meanwhile, Dr Vivek Trivedi - co-chair of the BMA junior doctors committee - said: "“If our government doesn’t act now, it doesn’t take a genius to see where this will lead: an exodus of junior doctors to foreign countries, with the ones who stay in the NHS facing an ever-increasing workload – until they feel they have no option but to leave too or get burnt out."
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The Health and Social Care Secretary has been clear that supporting and retaining the NHS workforce is one of his key priorities, and that includes our hardworking junior doctors.
“Our multi-year pay deal with the British Medical Association is increasing junior doctor’s pay by a cumulative 8.2% by 2023." This figure is across the multi-year lifetime of the pay deal.
The spokesperson added the DHSC had invested £90m to pay experienced doctors more, and for for greater weekend and night shift pay. The Government has committed to publishing a "comprehensive workforce strategy" in 2023.
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