Junior Doctor Pay Calculator: VIC, SA, NT & Locum

Junior doctors in Australia are paid under state-specific enterprise agreements, not a single national award. The AMA Victoria agreement, the NT DIT agreement, and the SA SMOEA each have different penalty rate structures, different overtime rules, and different approaches to allowances. If you’ve searched for a “junior doctor pay calculator” and found generic hourly-rate tools, that’s why they don’t work for your situation.

Why each state has different rules

Unlike nurses, who are mostly covered by state nursing awards derived from the national Nurses Award 2020, junior doctors are covered by negotiated enterprise agreements that differ by state and health service. The same role (intern, RMO, registrar) has different base rates, overtime structures, and allowances depending on whether you’re in a Victorian public hospital, an NT facility, or SA Health.

The complexity compounds when you do locum or casual work alongside your hospital contract, which many registrars and RMOs do.

Supported junior doctor agreements

AMA Victoria Doctors in Training
Covers junior doctors at Victorian public health services. Night shift loadings apply to hours within defined night-period boundaries (generally 10 pm–6 am). Overtime windows are calculated separately for pre-rostered and post-rostered hours. Weekend and public holiday penalties stack. The Victorian agreement is one of the more complex in the country, particularly for registrars doing on-call.

SA SMOEA (SA Doctors in Training)
The SA Medical Officers Enterprise Agreement uses a four- or six-week overtime averaging cycle, not a weekly calculation. If you’re tracking overtime week by week and your hospital is on a six-week cycle, you’re measuring the wrong period. Shift It tracks the full averaging cycle. Rural locality allowances also apply at SA Health facilities outside the metro area.

NT DIT Enterprise Agreement 2022–25
Covers Royal Darwin, Katherine, Tennant Creek, and Alice Springs hospitals. Includes remote locality loadings that vary by facility, and on-call and recall provisions. High call-back rates at regional facilities make accurate recall tracking material to your fortnightly pay figure.

NSW junior doctors
NSW Doctors in Training are covered by NSW Health agreements. NSW DiT isn’t in the built-in list yet — contact us to request it and we’ll fast-track it.

Contract plus locum: the multi-agreement problem

Many junior doctors combine a hospital contract with locum sessions. The hospital contract is under the relevant state DIT agreement. Locum sessions are typically at a flat session rate, under a private billing arrangement, or under a separate casual agreement at a private hospital.

Tracking both means two separate pay records, two separate agreements, and two separate pay periods. Shift It’s Jobs feature handles this with per-job award configuration: your hospital contract job runs the DIT pay rules, your locum job runs whatever rate structure applies to that engagement. Each job has its own calendar, its own award, and its own payslip comparison.

What to look for on a junior doctor payslip

A correct payslip for an RMO or registrar doing a mix of ordinary, night, and on-call shifts will have multiple rate lines. Common underpayments:

• Night shift boundary not applied correctly: a shift from 3 pm to 11 pm should show ordinary rate to the night boundary and the night loading after. A flat rate across the whole shift underpays the evening portion.
• Post-rostered overtime at ordinary rate: overruns beyond the rostered finish should attract the overtime rate immediately. If they’re being paid at the ordinary rate because total hours for the week are under some threshold, the calculation is wrong.
• On-call allowance missing: rostered on-call periods attract a per-hour allowance separate from any recall payments. If the allowance doesn’t appear on the payslip for a fortnight where you were on call, it wasn’t paid.
• Incorrect overtime cycle: if you’re on a six-week averaging cycle (SA) or a fortnightly cycle and your payslip is calculating overtime weekly, the threshold is wrong.

How to check your pay

Import your roster into Shift It, set your award and classification, and Pay Check produces the expected figure for each pay period. Compare it to your payslip gross. If there’s a discrepancy, the breakdown shows which component is off — night loading, on-call allowance, overtime, or something else.

For supported agreements, see the full list. For awards not yet listed, the custom pay rules option lets you configure a manual rate structure while we work on building it natively.