More tooth problems, how can dental bridges cost £650?

mal4mac

Is that pointy tooth your canine? I had a second pre-molar fall out and happily live with the gap. If it's your first pre-molar rather than a incisor couldn't you just live with it? Zero cost!

mal4mac

I've just looked at payscale.com and an entry level dentist (0-5 years) earns £50K rising steadily to £70K after twenty years. That's a fair whack in most people's estimation! Not saying they don't deserve it, but the attempts by our dental experts here to show that dentists are cash-strapped does raise a gappy smile in me :?

P.S similar figures for university lecturers are £28K rising to £36K.

Apollonia

mal4mac wrote: »

I've just looked at payscale.com and an entry level dentist (0-5 years) earns £50K rising steadily to £70K after twenty years. That's a fair whack in most people's estimation! Not saying they don't deserve it, but the attempts by our dental experts here to show that dentists are cash-strapped does raise a gappy smile in me :?

P.S similar figures for university lecturers are £28K rising to £36K.

A link would have been nice to see what you were looking at. Was it this one? http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=General_Dentist/Salary

The small print underneath says "Individuals reporting: 29" Also, median and average are not the same thing but that table uses both terms to describe a salary of £51,204.

There's a more informative comparison list here:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3334946/Best-paid-jobs-2015-Compare-pay-UK-average-350-professions.html

Dentists are at number 35 (average earnings £44,979) and senior professionals of educational establishments are at number 20 with £50,427.

Interesting.

brook2jack

Apollonia wrote: »

A link would have been nice to see what you were looking at. Was it this one? http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=General_Dentist/Salary

The small print underneath says "Individuals reporting: 29" Also, median and average are not the same thing but that table uses both terms to describe a salary of £51,204.

There's a more informative comparison list here:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3334946/Best-paid-jobs-2015-Compare-pay-UK-average-350-professions.html



Dentists are at number 35 (average earnings £44,979) and senior professionals of educational establishments are at number 20 with £50,427.

Interesting.

Of course the dentist will have £40,000 to £80,000 debt after their five year course and then if they do any post graduate qualifications those have to be funded as well. However the first two years of postgraduate training (dft1 and dft2 ) are salaried, after that most dentists are self employed so no sick pay, maternity pay, pension (if NHS work is done there is provision for pension), etc so a comparison with someone on a salary is somewhat uneven. At least 10 to 20% should be allowed for the benefits of a salary .

Also average earnings have fallen by 20% in last few years.

brook2jack

mal4mac wrote: »

I've just looked at payscale.com and an entry level dentist (0-5 years) earns £50K rising steadily to £70K after twenty years. That's a fair whack in most people's estimation! Not saying they don't deserve it, but the attempts by our dental experts here to show that dentists are cash-strapped does raise a gappy smile in me :?

P.S similar figures for university lecturers are £28K rising to £36K.

Figures have been debunked by Apollonia but actually dentists are paid piecemeal by the work they do. The rate at which you work does increase (and experience) up until your forties, after that as health, back,skin problems kick in earnings decrease again .

In order to work as a dentist you will pay roughly £5000 a year in registration and indemnity fees , roughly 714 peoples NHS check ups, X-rays and hygiene treatments. To pay student loan another 343 patients. So a dentist doing NHS work will have to provide over 1000 band one treatments before they even start to earn anything.

welshdent

Given the NHS fees (still the biggest source of income for most associate dentists) are capped and have not gone up in 10 years I struggle to see where you get your data from. Also year 1 dentists absolutely do not earn 50K. I should know seeing as I have one in my practice on the usual training scheme they do. It is more like £30K. If they do the optional second year in hospital it is around the same amount

also you are not taking in to account the over heads that we have. Just for registration an indemnity you are looking at around £5K per year thats without factoring in BDA membership and CPD courses, HIW (wales) registration etc. Our income can not steadily rise because we are not salaried. You get a job offering X amount of UDAs at £Y per UDA. you complete them you get paid for them. The only way to earn more is to supplement with private treatments but you can not make people have them so consequently this does not rise in line with time qualified either.

Sorry but with all due respect you do not really know what you are talking about

mal4mac

Apollonia wrote: »

A link would have been nice to see what you were looking at...

Dentists are at number 35 (average earnings £44,979) and senior professionals of educational establishments are at number 20 with £50,427.

The link:

http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Dentist/Salary

Note -- this has 321 reporting and a nice graph!

P.S. "Senior professionals at educational establishments" are *senior*, and there are very few of those positions going. What do *senior* dentists earn? I worked as a "professional in an educational establishment" for twenty years and never reached £45000! (that's after as much student-time as your average dentist, and I also have grade As in science A levels...) OK, I accept dentists deserve about 1/3 more than me for suffering all that drilling and filling, rather than doing interesting research. But I find it really funny to see dentists complaining about not earning enough.

mal4mac

welshdent wrote: »

Given the NHS fees (still the biggest source of income for most associate dentists) are capped and have not gone up in 10 years I struggle to see where you get your data from. Also year 1 dentists absolutely do not earn 50K. I should know seeing as I have one in my practice on the usual training scheme they do. It is more like £30K. If they do the optional second year in hospital it is around the same amount .

If you check the link, which I have now provided in my last post, you can see that 10% of dentists are on £30 000, or below. I guess they are like your year 1 dentist. Compare this to a typical research assistant on jobs.ac.uk:

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ANA047/bee-ecology-research-assistant/

They would start at £25 000.

That registration for indemnity, etc., is a good point, and may eat up the difference. So OK, maybe RAs and dentists start at about the same wage. BUT, what about after five years. From the graph on my link, dentist earnings look to go up very quickly!

I know (from experience!) that the scale increments are very small in academic related jobs, and you quickly get stuck at the top of the scale. So our bee researcher may end up sticking at £30 000 from year five to ten (before deciding, like me, that web commerce looks like a much better idea...)

HIW (wales) registration etc. Our income can not steadily rise because we are not salaried. You get a job offering X amount of UDAs at £Y per UDA. you complete them you get paid for them. The only way to earn more is to supplement with private treatments but you can not make people have them so consequently this does not rise in line with time qualified either.

So payscale.com, and the 321 dentists who took part, are just telling lies are they? You said your year 1 dentist is on £30K. Isn't that a salary? Are you saying that *you* are on £30K a year?

Dentists are saying stuff like "I can only root fill it privately.", and thereby get extra dosh. Here's a channel 4 dispatches that indicates that this is what many dentists are doing:

http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/dispatches-investigation-reveals-dentist-overcharging

"... the government should say, right, we're going to provide an NHS service. They should then employ every dentist they want to on a set salary which is paid to them by the government or the NHS.... Those dentists should not be allowed to do any private treatment at all," - Danny Pretorius, dentist.

welshdent

None of the dentists here have said anything at all about if we think we earn too much or too little. That comes from other posters. All any of us have done is to point out what happens and what the unseen costs are.

Now regards income. Almost all dentists certainly those beyond year 2 in practice are self employed. We aren't salaried and as such we can not have incremental increases and pay rises the longer we work. Basically. What we do we are paid for. End of story. The only way an experienced practitioners salary would increase is to
Buy a practice and do away with the percentage of gross split to take all profits after expenses (which are around the 60+% mark.
The NHS funding system does not account for the stage of qualification for be dentist. They simply say do this much work and we will give you this much money.
It seems to be the lack of salary that throws most people. They all assume we are being paid bucket loads of cash which keeps rising. The whole "never see a poor dentist" like or comments on the cars we drive get trotted out. But it's just not really true. If anything many dentists incomes drop over time as they are not able to sustain the work rate they could at 25 when they are 55.

welshdent

Just to clarify. Only year 1 dentists working in NHS practice are salaried. Outside that hospital and community dentists are and armed forces. Everyone else is self employed and paid for the work they do.