Doctors are the lynchpin of any health system. They are among the most highly trained professionals. To get to the very top of their field consultant physicians often study for a five year medical degree, then perhaps a postgrad, followed by years as a junior doctor.
For specialists it can take 15 or 20 long years of experience, through what used to be called house officer and registrar, to consultant. Advertisement Advertisement Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Belfast News Letter, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. There is good reason for this.
If someone operates on your brain, for example, they must be very, very skilled. A patient would expect no less. And having dedicated decades of their life to building such expertise, they rightly expect to be well paid.
They are. On the NHS their salary scale is from about £90,000 to £120,000. From roughly three times average earnings to four times.
Those who work in a specialty where they can do private practice earn far more. But this is modest remuneration in the medical world. Consultants in England have a slightly higher NHS scale.
Specialist doctors in Australia , Canada and the US earn more than twice as much. Even consultants in the Republic working in its own state health system earn almost twice as much as their NI counterparts. Consultants in NI have also been robbed of distinction awards, which took a tiny number of the very best up to the level of judge’s pay, as is due the top state servants.
This was politically cowardly because Stormont would never cut pay of the judiciary. If anyone deserves a pay rise in NI, NHS consultants do. It is good they now have one.
Even so, there is still unreality among political leaders on both sides of the Irish Sea about pay. There are deserving cases including consultants but Labour has given across the board public pay rises which risks fuelling strikes. Stormont’s approach has also at times seemed to reward such action.
And still there is no talk about more efficient ways of delivering public services like health..
