There are lots of reasons to do any job, but becoming a doctor takes a long time and it's understandable that if you're going to spend years training, you'll want to be fairly paid once you're finally qualified as a doctor.
Today, we're going to look at the expected salaries for doctors in Australia, whether the salaries are fair, and the non-financial reasons to become a doctor.
What Is the Average Salary in Australia?
Before we start looking at how much doctors earn in Australia, it's worthwhile seeing how much people generally earn in the country.
After all, it's useful to have a benchmark for what other professions are earning before choosing to spend a decade training as a doctor.
In Australia, the average salary is around $90,000 so keep this figure in mind when looking at the average salaries for doctors.
Australian salaries are affected by education, too, and the higher the level of education, the higher you can be expected to be paid.
Basically, for every qualification you gain, you can increase your salary between 17% and 23% in comparison to your previous qualification.
This means that those with a PhD earn an average salary nearly two and a half times greater than those straight out of high school.
How Much Should We Expect Doctors to Earn?
Working from these, we could work out a ballpark figure for doctors using the average $90,000 salary to ensure that their education level is being fairly remunerated concerning their academic qualifications and training.
As nearly half of Australia has completed tertiary education, let's assume that the $90,000 average salary is for somebody with an undergraduate degree and go from there.
Since the average professional with a master's degree earns around 29% more than those with a degree, doctors should earn at least $116,000 a year to reflect their education. Since PhD graduates earn 29% more than that, we can set an upper limit of $150,000 for an expected salary.
Of course, this isn't taking into account experience, which also increases salaries. For the purpose of these estimates, we weren't able to find the average experience of workers in Australia, but it is another factor that you might want to take into account.
Similarly, there are a lot of other factors that affect salaries, but we must know roughly how much employees with similar levels of training are being paid when thinking about the salary for any job. One fact we can assure you of, though. Doctors who studied at easy to get into medical programs Australia earn as much as their counterparts, who jumped through hoops for admittance to their medical studies.
What Is the Average Salary for Doctors in Australia?
The average annual salary for doctors in Australia is around $153,000. As this is the average, some doctors (usually newly-qualified and inexperienced doctors) earn less, but there's also the potential to earn more.
The lower range for doctors' salaries is $123,000 with the upper end of the range at $235,000 a year.
You need to keep in mind that no two doctors are alike and with specialisation and the different fields of medicine, these salaries are just averages.
How Much Do GPs Earn in Australia?
In Australia, full-time general practitioners (GPs) are a special case of doctors so it's worthwhile considering them apart from the salary averages that we've just seen (even though they were likely included in them).
Since GPs in Australia (and other countries) are classified as “individual contractors”, they're not actually salaried employees as they own their own and operate their own practice.
They'll charge their services to Medicare and earn their salary more as a service fee related to the number of consultations and the type of consultation they offered.
This also means how much they earn depends on how many patients they see. This is why their average salary ranges between $200,000 and $350,000 though the GPs that work in the evenings, on the weekends, and with chronic disease patients can earn closer to the $500,000 mark!
What Is the Starting Salary for a Doctor in Australia?
These salary ranges are all well and good, but you're probably wanting to know how much you'll be paid straight out of medical school.
Firstly, before you can become a registered doctor in Australia, you need to complete a year as an intern. In practice, this is actually 47 weeks of work to account for holidays, etc.
As medical interns aren't technically doctors (though they will have completed medical school), they won't be paid the same salaries as registered and qualified doctors. The average salary for a medical intern is around $80,000 ranging between $73,000 and $91,000 generally.
Are Doctors Highly Paid in Australia?
We've seen that the salaries that doctors and medical interns in Australia are quite representative of their education and experience, you might be wondering how other countries pay their doctors.
Cost of living makes comparing salaries across countries quite difficult so we'll look to focus on countries with somewhat similar economies. Parts of Europe such as Germany and the UK as well as the US, and Canada all make for quite useful comparisons.
When you convert the salaries for primary care physicians around the world, Australian doctors are paid quite well. Only the US and Germany pay more with the UK, France, Italy, and Spain all paying less.
As always, take these numbers with a pinch of salt because they're just averages and salaries can vary quite wildly within countries, especially larger countries like the US where there are stark differences between the economies of various states, for example.
How Much Does It Cost to Become a Doctor in Australia?
From what we've seen so far, doctors' salaries in Australia are not only good in comparison to a lot of other countries, but they're also representative of the level of education and training doctors have.
That brings us to the biggest hurdle of becoming a doctor: the training. You can't become a doctor overnight and neither can you become a doctor for free. All this education and training comes at a cost and we're sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but it's not very cheap becoming a doctor.
Aside from things like a $500 fee to take the exam that will get you into medical school (the GAMSAT), you have to consider the cost of tuition as well as the cost of living during all these years at university and medical school.
Your undergraduate degree could cost between $20,000 and $50,000, but once you've seen the cost of medical school, that will seem quite inconsequential. Your doctor of medicine is likely to cost you around $350,000.
These are just the costs of tuition, by the way, so you'll also have to pay for food, bills, and accommodation during the 7 years it'll take you to complete these degrees before you can start earning as a medical intern.
Basically, $400,000 is how much you'll have spent on tuition to become a doctor and that's before you do your residency and specialise through vocational training, which can take a few more years, but could be worth it since specialisation also comes with better salaries.
Other Reasons to Become a Doctor in Australia
Becoming a doctor is about more than just the money, though, and we've seen that the salaries are good but it's also quite expensive to train and qualify as a doctor.
So what other reasons should you consider when deciding if you should become a doctor?
Here are our reasons to become a doctor,
Help Patients
This is the big reason for a lot of people to work in medicine: they want to help people. As a doctor, your job will be to treat patients and this passion is what gets medical professionals through their toughest days.
Lots of Opportunities for Work
As a doctor, you'll rarely have to worry about finding work. While people in other lines of work will have to worry about their job security or finding work, this isn't something that doctors will really ever have to worry about.
Paid Overtime
Even when we're trying to avoid thinking about money, we're still thinking about the money. While overtime is something that doctors and a lot of medical professionals will be subjected to, it's comforting to know that overtime for doctors is paid and is often paid at a premium.
Is Working as a Doctor in Australia Worth It?
While the original costs of becoming a doctor are very high, we believe that the salaries make it worth it, especially if you choose a lucrative speciality that can bolster your earnings.
Being a doctor is also a very rewarding career where you get to help people, it just so happens that you can also earn an excellent salary while you do it, and that's not a bad thing. After all, you've earned it!
Enjoyed this article? Leave a rating!
Loading...
Interns are technically qualified doctors. They have provisional registration with Aphra and gain general registration after the intern year. Most australian universities graduates complete an MD nowadays which is an extended masters degree. Interns prescribe meds, manage medical/surgical wards and develop treatment plans with their respective teams, they also assist with surgical procedures and work in ED seeing patients independently, working them up and managing their care.