Originally Posted by Unregistered

At the tail-end (last few months) of my speciality training in the UK, and just wanna give some insights…

Training conditions in the UK are generally better than that of Singapore, with the exception of pay in absolute terms.

In relative terms, a trainee doctor in the UK earns more on an hourly basis. I am getting paid around £4,500 post-tax as a ST5 Radiology Registrar. On average, I am working around 45 hours a week. Annual paid leave is 35 days. This does not include quality improvement time/ days that I can take leave off for self-study or portfolio writing.

Of course, I am unable to save much compared to working in Singapore, because I have to pay for rent and transport which is more expensive in the UK.

However, if I had chosen to return to Singapore immediately after medical school (like most of my SG peers), it will have been neigh impossible or extremely difficult to match into any respectable speciality.

Most, if not all of my peers are now family physicians/GPs working at Healthway/Raffles. Only 1 got into speciality training in Psychiatry and that’s after 2 tries.

So, in essence, my advice to all Singaporean UK medical graduates or even Singapore medical graduates(who can afford to break bond), is to slog it out for speciality training in the UK, before returning to Singapore.

Sure, in the short term you are financially less well-off compared to your peers who chose to return/work as an MO in Singapore. But long term gains outweighs those minuscule short term gains.