If you wanted a six figure job working fewer than 45 hours a week, you should have chosen the health service

My sister is a Doctor and I can concur with AN Shah's points above, hospital doctors rarely work less than 50/60 hour weeks and 24 - 48 hour shifts are still not uncommon when there are critically ill patients and a lack of staff around.

The 'mean' figure of all healthcare workers would be heavily skewed by non-doctors: male Nurses, Assistant's, Radiologists etc who generally work less hours than Doctors. However Doctor's earn much higher average salaries which again distort the statistics above (a bit like the banker's bonus debate average salaries being skewed by the top 20% creaming 80% of the bonus pot)... so overall it's pretty inaccurate to generalise. Still sensationalist articles draw website hits, newspaper sales and vent public frustration.

Sure medical professionals save lives and probably give more back to society as a whole than bankers but as a lifestyle consider mandatory night shift patterns, the stress of having to deal with critical or aggressive patients & budget cutbacks in the NHS over-stretching resources.

Like many city slickers I'd rather stick to my long hours starring at a screen in the city any day then having to deal with the general public

I'm an NHS doctor. I can provide some facts here.

1. After 6 years at medical school with no pay, you start as a junior doctor on around 29k. Over the next 10-15 years of specialist training & research, it gradually rises to around 55k. When you become a consultant at the age of 35-40 (in the least competitive hospital disciplines, perhaps 32-33), you start on around 75k, with small increments each year. By the time you're 65, your NHS salary can be around 105k.

2. Although you only work 48 hours a week *on paper* (no full-time consultants I know are working 37 hour weeks) in reality you're working longer than your scheduled hours. When it's time to go home but somebody's life (or limb or kidney or eye) depends on you not going home, you're not going to point out the details of your contract to the patient. You're going to stay and help them. This is the basis of a compassionate profession. Almost all doctors work significantly more hours than they are contractually supposed to.

3. The average figures quoted must include all non-Dr males (eg nurses), and yet the incomes must include private incomes (i.e. their free time). This is flawed & misleading.

So a job should be 'respected' because of the hours that it takes to do it?

I'd love to do some building work for you mate

It's about time that people stopped piping up about how much bankers earn and started respecting the fact that this is a job which requires the kind of hours most people in the public sector would consider obscene. Even those earning a packet.

Fact: whose fault is that? Fact: Stop projecting you anger and jealousy onto others. Fact: You are a gonk