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Evidence-Based Guidance

Medicine is hard enough.
Your finances shouldn't be.

The Institute for Doctors provides rigorous, objective resources on practice management, locum taxation, and NHS pension complexities. Built by specialists, for specialists.

Why we exist.

A note on our editorial stance.

Physicians spend decades mastering clinical reasoning, only to be thrown into a complex web of tax structures, liability insurance, and opaque pension calculations with zero formal training.

The result? Thousands of hours lost to administrative anxiety, and millions in collective wealth left on the table or lost to inefficiency.

We reject the fluff. No generic "empowering" platitudes. We provide concrete spreadsheets, exact tax thresholds, and step-by-step audit survival guides. If we don't have the data, we don't publish the article.

By the numbers.

Financial literacy isn't optional. The cost of ignorance compounds over a career.

Protect Your Wealth
42%

Of consultants report significant confusion over their pension annual allowance tax charges (BMA Survey, 2023).

£14,500

Average unclaimed allowable expenses per locum doctor over a 5-year period.

1 in 4

GPs considering early retirement cite administrative and financial burnout as the primary cause.

100%

Of our tools are free, ad-free, and run entirely in your browser. We don't harvest your data.

Calculators that actually work.

Stop using generic calculators that don't understand the NHS pension taper or GP partner profit shares. Our tools are built for the reality of medical careers.

Locum Take-Home

Compare sole trader vs limited company structures at different hourly rates.

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CPD Tracker

Log reflections, categorise points, and export directly for your annual appraisal.

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Pension Growth

Project your NHS pension growth and estimate potential tax charges ahead of time.

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Overhead Ratio

Calculate practice expenses against gross income to benchmark your efficiency.

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New Guide

Surviving a CPD Audit

Being selected for a CPD audit doesn't have to be a crisis. We break down exactly what the GMC looks for, how to structure your reflections, and the common pitfalls that lead to remediation.

  • The difference between a summary and a reflection.
  • How to map varied activities to Good Medical Practice domains.
  • Handling missing evidence retrospectively.
Read the full guide

Commonly Asked Questions

It depends heavily on your projected profit, whether you need the income now vs retaining it in the company, and IR35 implications. Generally, if your private income is over £50,000 and you don't need to extract it all immediately, incorporation offers tax advantages. See our Incorporation Guide for detailed thresholds.
As a rough rule of thumb, if you are a sole trader, ring-fence 30-40% of your gross income immediately into a separate account. This covers Income Tax, National Insurance (Class 2 & 4), and Student Loan deductions. Use our Take-Home Calculator for exact figures based on your hourly rate.
Almost always, yes. It is a defined benefit scheme backed by the government, offering a guaranteed income for life, ill-health retirement benefits, and death-in-service cover. The employer contribution rate (currently over 20%) is effectively free money you lose by opting out. However, high earners need to manage the Annual Allowance carefully. Read our Pension Guide.

The Monthly Briefing

One email a month. No spam. Just significant changes to tax law, pension legislation, and new tools we've built.

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