Anger as locum doctors boast about earning £17k a month while nurses use foodbanks and strike over pay
19 December 2022, 09:47 | Updated: 21 December 2022, 16:32
Doctors have sparked fury by boasting on TikTok about earning £17,000 a month as locums, while nurses are forced to use food banks and are hitting picket lines over a pay dispute.
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Several doctors - dubbed 'medfluencers' - posted videos comparing a junior doctor's salary of £33,000 with the higher hourly rate for temporary work.
The young medics also encourage other people at the start of their careers to switch to locum work to make more from the NHS.
But the videos, uncovered by the MailOnline have been slammed by Labour's shadow health secretary as an "infuriating" waste of taxpayers' money.
The NHS pays locum agencies £2.5 billion per year, paying junior doctors £60 per hour, compared with junior doctors who work directly for the health service, who get about £13 per hour.
It comes as junior doctors may be the next NHS workers to go on strike, with British Medical Association members holding a national vote.
Nurses went on strike on Thursday for the first time in more than a century, and are prepared to walk out again on Tuesday, in a dispute over pay. Some 14% of nurses and health workers are using food banks, according to a survey.
Meanwhile ambulance workers will also go on strike on Wednesday, and again a week later.
But the 'medfluencers' are telling people in videos how they can work less, earn less and go travelling by becoming a locum.
In one video, Yaa Oheema, 26, said: "I think a junior doctor's salary is about £33,000, which ends up being around £2,400 a month and £13/£14 an hour," she said.
"But actually when you work part-time or as a locum, you can get anything from £35 to £60 an hour. So you can actually work less and make more money."
Another video shows a junior doctor saying she makes "£2,000 working a week as an agency junior doctor versus £625 on a full-time contract".
A third said: "Taking locum shifts purely to afford my fashion taste outside of the wards."
One final-year medical student said he would be going into locum work, rather than into the NHS.
He said: "First of all, the money rates are a lot better but that's not the main reason.
"It's for the freedom to choose your own hours, to choose where you work and when you work.
"We see doctors posting videos talking about their burnout all the time, and there are so many jobs out there, the NHS is always short-staffed so locum jobs will always be available."
But Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting and an influential think tank called for the locum loophole to be closed.
Mr Streeting said: "It's infuriating to see vast amounts of taxpayers' money going straight into the pockets of recruitment agencies, while patients find it impossible to get a GP appointment or an operation on time.
"The failure to train enough doctors over the past 12 years has left the NHS with no choice but to pay over the odds."
Alex Baylis, of The King's Fund think-tank, said: "Training doctors is incredibly expensive and the NHS needs to have a pipeline of staff for the coming decades and keep them there for the whole of the career to make use of that investment."
An NHS spokesman said: "While this story is based on the experiences of some individual accounts, thousands of doctors enter the workforce every year who go on to have long careers in the NHS."
