Final year medical students 'can't afford to pay rent' | Hacker News Reader

Final year medical students 'can't afford to pay rent'

bbc.co.uk

46 pointsLinuxBender40 comments

The entire medical system of training in the UK needs reform.

You spend six years (more or less) at university, racking up debt. Once you graduate, you spend two years as a "F1/F2", where you basically get bullied and do clerical work. Once you've completed these two years, you can apply for specialist training.

You are working 60 hour weeks doing 1/4 night shifts (if you're lucky) and 1/3 weekend. Not only that you move hospital every six months. in london this is kinda feasible, else where it means a 2 hour commute. The starting wage for an F1 is £24-36k

After the first two years you can apply for specialist training. However the attrition rate is horrific: https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l523.full loosing 64% of your trainees after 8 years of training is just pathetic.

Some of this is government based, but a lot is the medical establishment being utter shits. bullying is rife, the "leaders" have a lot of "I managed it, it didn't do me any harm", there is no incentive to change because everyone rotates every 6months, so why bother putting effort in?

There was a great Reddit thread where a young lady (UK) told her dad she was training to be a nurse, and he assumed (like how things worked in his time, in his profession), she'd be working at a hospital soon. She had to explain that ... no, she has to do two years in a classroom, then internships, paying for it and all her expenses from non-nursing income, before she gets to that stage.

The dad was dumbfounded at how that was even possible.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/2kbxs2/stude...

That's just the inevitable result of increasingly stringent regulations

To be fair, you have to be a high school graduate to think the current nurse career path is a great idea. Entry level jobs were better before universities monopolized them.

Basically everything in the UK needs reform as far as I'm concerned.

We've had the same party in government for 12 years now and it shows.

That's pretty much the exact same thing people said at the end of the Blair/Brown Labour years. And their decade+ of power isn't a decade I'm looking at with great fondness either (politically speaking anyway).

I think the bigger issue is just that the political system doesn't work very well, and hasn't for quite some time. Part of this is due to the system itself (e.g. first-past-the-post constituencies), and part of it is cultural (e.g. a nasty mean-spirited press insistently ridiculing politicians for a slightly awkward photo of eating a sandwich).

Poor people lives got better under Blair, whereas the Tories have gutted large amounts of the state. If it wasn't for Iraq people would (and do if you ask them specifics) look back on New Labour policy favourably.

It's very easy to wax poetical about systemic change, and I often will too, but i don't want this government's absolutely awful record to be swept under a rug of abstraction.

> If it wasn't for Iraq

But it was.

The slightest majority always blame labour when it's been the Tories in power for over a decade with all of the scandals. People can and will vote against their own interests out of spite.

Yeah people talk about being a doctor like it's a great and prestigious job. No you get paid a basic salary to work 60 hours, and it's all on-site, unsocial hours, in grim buildings, with little choice about what you do.

That's fair.

Unfortunately in the UK at least, the question of "how come student doctors can't afford rent when we give 25% of tax receipts to the NHS" it's too close to criticism of the NHS, a secular heresy.

Like a lot of things in the UK this sounds like a totally incompetent training process

Repeatedly leaning on bullying undermines any other points you try to make.

In the end what you need isn't a government spending solution but rather a free market solution. That and a less whiny attitude...

I'm not sure if your joking or not.

The first effect of a free market is that staffing costs will double almost instantly. A 10% vacancy rate and a 8-16 year lag for doctors and a 6 year lag for nurses will create inflationary pressures for staff.

Without a proper regulation structure there will be a drop in care (free market means profit, which means cost cutting which means understaffing. Just look at holland)

The second effect of free market will mean that only dense cities will have good facilities. Again, cities are the only place where you can run a profitable specialist centre.

What you are failing to grasp from my post is that the 50% of the issue with the NHS are largely cultural. Changing culture is hard.

Yes there are opportunities to create efficiency, but frankly there aren't enough staff to do that. This means spending more money on the NHS.

> Repeatedly leaning on bullying undermines any other points you try to make.

> That and a less whiny attitude

That was quick!

Also a free market solution does not work for inelastic demands. Its not the end all be all it works great for some things Health Care is not one of them.

All year graduate students can't afford to pay rent in much of CA. Even with what is considered a "good" stipend rent is eating your takehome up unless you split a bedroom. Kinda ridiculous considering all the responsibility and expertise required of grad students who are conducting research, designing experiments, writing manuscripts, grant proposals, or designing and teaching college coursework to undergraduates. The fact that your salary might quadruple or more the day you graduate and walk into industry just shows how wage depressed these necessary skills are within academia.

Sounds like the world is telling those graduates they should stop wasting their time in academia and move to industry.

We should also tell people who are teachers and other professions to all quit their jobs and work in tech too. That will solve all pay related problems, right?

Hey, recent polls suggest that 60% to 90% of nurses want to quit or plan on quitting their jobs. They don't make as much as programmers and should work in tech as well. Who needs or can afford healthcare in the US anyways?

There is an optimal amount of teachers, nurses, etc... that optimal amount is the one that maximizes the person's income.

Perhaps you’ve missed the news of the great resignation and wage inflation?

What wage inflation? Be hires are getting pay bumps to be at or above folks with 3-10 years of experience. It was fine at my old retail job, but for nursing it's just yet another detriment to nurse morale.

Eventually, yes

That's the problem, the world is telling them to do something detrimental to itself. That is the contradiction.

Catch 22, industry wants a PhD and puts it in the job description.

I attended medical school for one year -- before realizing that there were literally a thousand other things I'd rather do than become a physician.

Now, about twelve years since leaving that profession/lifestyle, I'm very happy with my decision. Recently I met with one of my childhood heroes, who is now back in retirement as our local community park maintainer... and it was glad to see him "living his dream."

I don't think I would ever be so foolish again to stake so much capital/time on a single-track career. You cannot pay medical doctors enough for the sacrifices almost all of them have made. It has taken me years to not be drowning in student loan obligations! I personally am very fortunate with my living/rent situation; cannot imagine starting a medical training at present.

The US system also has plenty of issues, but does anyone know why?

Medical doctors are highly skilled workers and there seems to be an insatiable demand for more of them. So why aren't they in a good negotiating position? Why aren't established doctors trying to help with the madness — especially those that have kids who are trying to enter the field.

The wages in medical field in the US are pretty good compared to Europe. Probably some would even say outrageous, I'm sure its part of the high cost per patient care in addition to layers of complexity with insurance sector.

I don't know much about Europe, but are comparing wages during residency, or after? Residents have 80+ hour weeks, $200k+ debt, and only a $50k salary.

It takes a very long time (undergrad + med school + residency + more to specialize) before the perks of being a doctor kick in in the US.

back in the 70's there was a US program "Trapper John M.D."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_John,_M.D.

one of the characters lived in a camper [caravan] out in the parking lot.

the concept has been _normalized_ over here for some time.

This made me curious so I went and watched a bit of it. He won it in a craps game, stopped working and drove it around the country until he ran out of money:

https://youtu.be/c7bDKT8Xc6U?t=1040

Not quite a story of not being able to afford rent, and a convenient device in a TV show.

Having studied and living in the uk, is this likely a LONDON problem compounded by the health board not realising most students finish when funding stops. Given this also isn't a surprise (you would be aware of your peers plans whilst a student) budgeting as a student 'should' cover this. Were getting that the "evil" landlord put the rent up, bit it's very important to know what the absolute value here is... Also id be surprised if a personal career development loan wouldn't help here if all else failed.

No, it isn't just London. One of the students is in Leeds, which is in the North. Definitely improved a lot over the last ten years but is still a fairly typical deprived West Yorkshire town. The problem is a lack of housing (London hasn't become significantly more expensive over the last five years or so, prices in cities outside London have).

And the issue with these kind of things is that your money is fixed. I don't think anyone could have predicted their rent going up or down. Inflation is 7% that impacts things.

If you are referring to the UK career development loan scheme, you can't fund undergrads and you can't take one out in the middle of a course (I believe, it was the case when I took one)

I agree that the picture given in these articles is not very helpful (unf, this is the way the news is going to be for a while, these times are a gold rush for journalists, easy clicks, easy bonuses) but, generally, this kind of thing is an issue. Medical students are the least impacted because they get money (however, they are the most politically organized).

This story is NOT about how they suddenly can't afford bread and butter due to 7% on average life changes. Nobody working a serious profession such as this is living so close to the lyteral bread-line as to have been impacted by this. If they were it's a very easy argument to make that they've been very naive with their personal financing. (especially when they're supposed to be a trained professional it's much, much more difficult to argue, oh how naive of them to not think of that...)

> compounded by the health board

I don't think the health board have anything to do with it - they don't fund students or set stipends do they? They just do initiatives for public health.

OT: the quotes had me very confused for a second.

Who uses single quotes for this purposes? Why wouldn't you use double quotes?

The British convention used to be to use single quotes for the outermost level, then double inside. But I see that the main article follows the American practice of double quotes outside. So I don't know.

Interesting, thank you.

Single quotes are more popular in British English.

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