I'm paid too much - doctor

2005-10-07 11:38

London - In what must rank as one of the least likely professional complaints of recent times, a British hospital doctor has written an article insisting he is paid far too much money for his job.

In his argument - which, a doctors' group noted, was not generally shared in the profession - Mark Jopling called for some of doctors' pay to be redistributed to less-well remunerated health workers such as nurses.

Writing in the New Statesman political weekly, published on Friday, the 24-year-old junior doctor in Nottingham, central England, said he was paid "a whopping £37 000 a year".

This was despite the fact he was "one of the least qualified, least skilled and lowliest paid doctors in my hospital," he wrote, adding: "My days are spent searching for missing heaps of patient notes, running errands and chasing up blood test results."

Were he to become a senior hospital consultant his annual pay would rise to around £90&nbps;000, while as a family practice doctor in the National Health Service (NHS), Jopling said, this could exceed £100 000 pounds.

"The overstretched NHS budget sets aside enough cash to ensure that the doctors' car park is packed with luxury motors, and that we can leave the chaotic communities which throng our hospital for big houses in the charming villages and estates out of town," he said.

In contrast, nurses started on a salary of £16 000 and even at the top of their profession made only around his current salary.

The condition and financing of the state-run NHS is a major political issue in Britain.

The article - which Jopling admitted would "earn me a few enemies" - was countered by the British Medical Association, which represents doctors.

"Unsurprisingly, it isn't widely held in the medical profession," a spokesperson told the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which reprinted some of Jopling's comments.

- AFP