The Lifestyle
The lifestyle is probably why most people think about moving to Australia. Better pay and better work life balance means life’s a lot easier than in the UK and Ireland. The working week for junior doctors in Australia is 38 hours and 5m hours of paid teaching. Consultants will often pick their own hours, split between public and private work. Overtime in most hospitals is not only paid but encouraged to be claimed. Weekends, evenings and nights get paid at a ‘penalty rate’ which is between x1.15 - x2 your average hourly rate.
Away from work Australia is pick your own adventure! Some of the ‘world’s most liveable’ cities, beach life, vineyards, spa towns and remote communities. Having worked and travelled around Australia we intend to help you find your own little corner of Australia.
We don’t claim to know what all specialties are like to work in so we have only covered GP and Emergency Medicine below, please feel free to email if you are wanting to find out more about other specialties and we can ask colleagues to give a quick summary.
General Practice
General practice is wildly different in Australia when compared to the UK. In general you can expect to be your own business and therefore decide on your working hours within the practice you work. Due to the variations of private (very common in Australia) vs non-private and varied working hours it’s difficult to gauge an average salary, however you should expect to earn over $200,000 annually based on a 4 day working week with 15 minute consults. Practices will often also provide a ‘signing on fee’ of $10-20k, although this isn’t always the case. Incentives of up to $60,000 a year are also available for GPs working in regional Australia.
Most international graduates have to commit to the Section 19AB 10 year moratorium which means working in an area of need, usually these are regional or rural areas. There are opportunities meeting these criteria close to metropolitan areas and there are one or two ways to reduce the years or work in metropolitan areas despite this and we’ll happily chat more about these if needed.
There are opportunities to work as a GP in country Australia without having a fellowship, feel free to ask us more about this!
Choose your own hours - generally 4 days a week
15 minute consults are the normal
Home visits are a rarity
Expect over $200,000 p.a.
Incentives available for working in regional areas
Emergency Medicine
We’ve all spent many years working in Emergency Departments in Australia and also in the busiest Emergency Department in the state of Victoria. Whilst the work was demanding it was still not as busy or as stressful as working in an emergency department in the UK. In general, emergency departments are expected to work the patient up and get the procedures like CVCs, intubation, sedations and reductions done in the department. The medicine, as you’d expect, is exactly the same just with a few snake bites and spider bites thrown in.
The renumeration is good. As an SHO/resident in ED you can expect to earn around $120,000 as a base rate, bearing in mind this will be significantly increased by penalty rates for weekend and evening/night shifts. An ED Registrar can expect to earn up to $170,000/year. This increases each year you work and can be supplemented by locum work for $100-200/hour. The renumeration varies state to state and often also with in the state depending on level of need and remoteness.
38 hours a week
Expect over $120,00 p.a. as an SHO/resident
Can work in Metropolitan areas
Treated as a professional