If you’ve found yourself looking at this blog post, you’re either a GP trainee who wants to know more about a GP trainees salary or a future GP trainee wishing to know how much you will earn from your GP ST1 to ST3 years.
What is a GP trainees salary? The complete GP trainee salary guide!
If you’ve found yourself looking at this blog post, you’re either a GP trainee who wants to know more about a GP trainees salary or a future GP trainee wishing to know how much you will earn from your GP ST1 to ST3 years.
The salary of a GP trainee is very similar to the salary of other trainee doctors. It’s governed by your seniority and the rota you’re currently working on. One of the major concerns for GP trainees is whether or not your GP trainee salary will take a hit during your GP rotations?! Just as it often does as a foundation doctor in supernumerary roles. Also, given the pending updates to the GP trainee contract, you may find yourself spending up to 24 months in a GP practice!
In this guide, I will cover the following;
GP trainee salary for ST1 and ST2 in hospital.
GP trainee salary for ST1 and ST2 in GP.
GP trainee salary for ST3 in GP.
Example gross GP trainee salary, taken from my ST1, ST2 and ST3 rotations.
If you’re a GP trainee in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, your GP trainee salary will differ, but there’s no significant difference with your gross salary.
Going back to basics!
If you’re pretty clued up with your junior doctor salary, please feel free to jump ahead to the next section by clicking here. Before we move on to discuss the numbers that matter, let’s use this section to recap our understanding of an example payslip and how this may differ from your foundation year salary.
Here is an example of a full-time payslip for junior doctors on the 2016 contract. This will differ from trainees on a less-than-full-time (LTFT) contract. If you’d like to know more about LTFT training, please keep an eye out on our blog as this will be coming very soon!
Important definitions:
Basic pay
Your basic pay is calculated on an average working week of 40 hours. You will receive a nodal point for your working grade. As a GPST1 and GPST2, your nodal point would be three. Once you move into GPST3, your basic pay will rise to a nodal point of four.
Additional rostered hours
The average working week for junior doctors outwith a hospital setting does not stop at 40 hours, and we are often contracted to additional hours based on our working rota. The maximum additional rostered hours are set at a maximum of 48 hours unless you have opted out of the working time regulations.
Night duty
Your night duty is calculated as the number of hours which receive an enhancement to your basic salary at 37%. The hours that contribute to this are specified within your work schedule.
Weekend allowance
Your weekend allowance serves as an enhancement for working a proportion of your rota hours during the weekend.
Flexible pay premia (during GP rotations only)
The flexible pay premia are offered to GP trainees during their GP rotations to combat the loss of earnings from the lack of out of hours work.
My GP trainee salary for ST1 and ST2 in hospital.
Let’s get down to the numbers that matter during your hospital placements. As a GP trainee in a hospital rotation, your salary will follow the usual trend for junior doctors. You will be paid more for the complex rotas and less for the chilled rotas.
Step one: Understanding your work schedule.
Step two: Use the BMA junior doctors contract tables of pay.
Understanding your work schedule
Now I’m not going to bore you with the legalities of a work schedule, but I would like to highlight how you can use your work schedule to predict your monthly gross salary. Here is an example of my work schedule taken during an ST2 hospital placement.
The example work schedule for a GP trainee.
Your contract is a full-time contract for 40 hours.
You will, in addition, be contracted for an additional 6:15 hours, making for total contracted hours of 46:15
The distribution of these will be as follows:
Average weekly hours at a basic hourly rate: 40:00
Average weekly hours attracting a 37% enhancement: 13:45
Annual pay for the role
Basic Pay (Nodal Point 3) £37,191.00
Pay for additional hours above 40: £5811.09
Enhanced pay at 37% rate: £4730.23
Weekend allowance: 7.5% £2789.33
Pensionable pay: £37,191.00
Non-pensionable pay: £13,330.65
Total annual pay for this role: £50,521.65
Given that your rotation will be less than 12 months, you can divide the annual pay by 12 to work out your monthly GP trainee salary.
To understand how this breakdown may affect your GP trainee salary, we need to switch our focus to the GP trainee pay scale from the BMA – based on the junior doctor 2016 contract pay scale tables. By using the above work schedule, we can estimate your gross salary.
Pay scales for junior doctors in England by the BMA.
On the left-hand side of the table is our “average hours worked per week” column. The row of importance is our 40 hours per week at a basic hourly rate. We then work across the table to the average number of enhanced hours per week, which is calculated at 6 hours. So our gross salary works out at £40,836.
We then add our weekend allowance, which is at a 7.5% enhancement for working less than 1 in 3 weekends!
You will receive your enhanced pay at 37% from your work schedule and should add this to your global payment.
If I were to use the BMA tables, my estimated gross GP trainee salary for the exact placement would work out at £48,468.23! Which is an approximate monthly GP trainee salary of around £4,000.
Using a salary calculator like this can help drill down your net figure, but be mindful of some additional factors;
– Do you undertake additional locum work?
– Have you taken an F3, F4 or F5 year before starting GP training?
– Do you have any other income streams (rental, stocks, social media income etc.)
– Are you paying a student loan?
– Have you enrolled on the NHS pension?
If you have an accountant, you could ask them to project your annual net income. Alternatively, you could estimate your gross yearly income for the financial year (April to April) and then calculate your likely net salary. If you’re looking for a realistic figure, it will lie somewhere around the mid to late £2,000s.
My GP trainee salary for ST1 and ST2 in General Practice.
“One of the major concerns for GP trainees is whether or not your GP trainee salary will take a hit during your GP rotations?!”
Unfortunately, the reality is that you will encounter a hit on your GP trainee salary in ST1 or ST2. Still, it’s not as significant as the difference you would have experienced during your foundation training. Let me explain – the simplest way to calculate your GP rotation salary is by adding the following elements;
Basic pay plus
Pay premia (aka Flex Pay GP 2016) plus
Enhanced pay at a 37% rate
Let’s start with the Enhanced pay – this figure is so small, it works out at around £18.90 per month for my ST3 salary, so it makes a marginal difference… if that!
What is my GP trainee salary whilst in GP?
This is calculated as your basic pay – which is £38,694 (as taken from the BMA pay scale table)
The GP premium is £8,789 for an annual GP rotation.
Your gross salary is calculated at £47,483, which gives you a monthly gross of £3,956.
There is an ever so slight difference!
My GP trainee salary for ST3 in General Practice.
Finally, there is a pay rise to discuss!
The calculation of your GP trainee salary for ST3 occurs in precisely the same format as before.
Basic pay plus
Pay premia (aka Flex Pay GP 2016) plus
Enhanced pay at a 37% rate
Your basic pay is £49,036 (as taken from the BMA pay scale table)
The GP premium is £8,789 for an annual GP rotation.
The total gross salary is calculated at £57,825, which gives you a monthly gross of £4,818.75.
As promised, here is a full breakdown of my gross salary over ST1, ST2 and ST3.
I hope that you’ve found this guide to be helpful. If you have found this guide to be practical, please do share it with your colleagues!
