Typically you will need funding for the following for a full-time PhD:

• PhD registration fees: most universities will charge PhD students an annual 'registration fee'. This may range from a few thousand pounds to ten thousand pounds or more.

• Research costs: most PhD projects will involve some direct research expenses. For example, if you are undertaking a lab project you will need to purchase reagents, lab consumables, and so on, and you may be charged a 'bench fee' to cover overheads. If you are setting up a pilot clinical trial you may have costs associated with the intervention you are testing, any trial-specific tests and patient follow-up and so on. For data projects there may be costs associated with accessing data from existing databases like CPRD. 

• Living expenses: you will need to cover all the usual living expenses. Your expectations around this will depend on your career stage and personal circumstances. If you are a MBPhD student you may be happy sharing a house with housemates, whereas if you are some years in to your medical career your expectations might be quite different!

An alternative to a full-time PhD is to undertake a part-time PhD (typically over 5+ years). During a part-time PhD you can continue working full-time so there should be no disruption to your income, but you will probably still need to find a way to cover PhD registration fees and research costs. I discuss pros and cons of a part-time PhD on the what is a PhD page.

You will often see people advertising a "fully funded PhD". Be mindful that this is a loose term that people can use this to mean anything from research costs being covered with a small stipend, through to a generous all-inclusive funding package. Make sure to dig in to the fine detail of what the offer is before committing to anything!

If you are applying for an advertised PhD project, as a minimum the supervisor should be offering to cover all research costs. Presumably they are advertising the PhD because the research topic is important to them (perhaps they have a research grant for it), so they should cover the direct research costs! 

You should also be mindful to check what is meant by an advertised "clinical salary" - will this match your current basic clinical salary?

Bear in mind, most funders and supervisors will only match the basic salary; quite reasonably you will not be paid on-call supplements if you are not undertaking any on-call.

Under the current junior doctor contract, salary is based on nodal points corresponding to training grade. When you go out of programme to undertake a PhD your training grade is effectively frozen so do not expect to go up a nodal point (e.g. if you go out of programme in ST4 you will stay at nodal point 4 throughout the PhD). However, you should expect to benefit from any increases in salary for your nodal point as a result of annual pay settlements.

A stipend is a tax-free financial allowance for living expenses. Stipends are considerably lower than a clinical salary, but you do not pay any tax or national insurance on them, so you take home the full amount.

The value of stipends may differ between institutions, but it is reasonable to expect something around the UKRI stipend rate, which was £19,237 in 2024-25 (outside of London).

Importantly, stipends are not considered taxable income. This means any additional earnings (e.g. from clinical duties) begin from a base income of £0. In other words, you won't have to pay income tax on the first £x of any income earned beyond your stipend, where x is the personal allowance (£12,570 in 2024-25). 

There are quite a few different models for funding the living expenses during your PhD. Which models are suitable for you will depend on your personal circumstances and expectations, how competitive your CV is, and how much time you are willing to invest in applying for fellowships. Broadly, here are some options:

• Self-funded PhD: a small number of individuals may be willing to undertake a PhD drawing on savings or other income streams for their living expenses. For example, someone might choose to do a PhD in retirement to stretch themselves intellectually - but self-funding in this way is very unusual for early career doctors!

• Clinical duties: the likeliest route to a reliable income stream for most early career doctors is to undertake some clinical duties throughout their PhD; universities allow registered students to do part-time work (e.g. up to 15 hours per week at the University of Birmingham). What opportunities are available to you will depend on your career stage, specialty, and set-up at local trusts. Common clinical duties PhD research fellows might undertake include doing a weekly or two-weekly clinic or filling an on-call rota slot. To work out what might be possible, ask prospective PhD supervisors about opportunties locally, or approach service leads in departments where you have worked in the past. Most people find it is better to have a predictable, regular committment and income from a clinical or on-call rota, rather than trying to pick up ad-hoc locums.

• Project funding: when senior academics apply for research project funding, they may 'cost in' a research fellow post to support the delivery of the project. This may be explicitly pitched to the funder as a PhD research fellow post, but even if it is not, it is often possible to use research fellow funding to support a PhD post. These posts will then be advertised to competitively appoint a research fellow. At a minimum such posts should cover all research costs and a stipend; the generosity of the funding package will depend on the funder and what the supervisor requested from them, and whether the the supervisor is able to top-up any shortfall from other funding sources. In the best case, you may be fortunate to be offered a full clinical salary without the need to apply for competititve fellowships! The downside of a project funded PhD is that you may be given a very rigid project plan that you are expected to deliver on.

• PhD fellowships: broadly speaking a PhD or (pre-)doctoral fellowship is any funding package designed specifically for supporting PhD research fellows, and competitively awarded. The terms and duration of fellowship awards vary widely so always check the fine detail. As a general rule, most fellowships will at a minimum cover research costs and a stipend, but some generous schemes will cover fees, clinical salary, and extensive training opportunities.

• Sponsorship: occasionally an employer may sponsor employees to undertake a PhD, covering all associated expenses. In the UK, this is unusual in medical disciplines. Overseas governments may sponsor their citizens to undertake PhDs in the UK.

In practice, many PhD research fellows have a blended funding model. For example, their research costs are covered by a supervisor's project grant and they may have a local funding for a stipend which they top-up by undertaking some clinical work.

There are many PhD fellowships available, but what you are eligible for will depend on factors including your career stage and society memberships, discipline, where you are hoping to undertake the PhD. Potential funders for fellowships are:

• Institutional studentships: some universities will fund studentships to support students to undertake PhDs. These could be medical school or cross-university fellowships and eligibility could be targetted at specific student group(s) or open to anyone. It's worth checking university websites for any such opportunities, as well as asking prospective supervisors.

• Charities: larger medical charities (e.g. BHF, Diabetes UK) may offer PhD fellowships - check websites of charities related to your discipline.

• National societies: some specialty associations, societies, and royal colleges offer PhD fellowships - usually to their members. Check websites of relevant societies to see what might be available.

• Industry: some companies (typically in the pharmaceutical sector) may sponsor PhD fellowships. If this might be relevanr to your discipline, try Googling to find current opportunities.

• Doctoral training programmes: some funders such as the Wellcome Trust and CRUK do not generally advertise individual PhD fellowships and instead award funding to universities / university partnerships to run 'training programmes'. These programmes typically have funding for a number of PhD research fellows, and positions are competitively appointed (though competition is likely to be considerably lower than for national NIHR and MRC schemes).

• Infrastructure awards: large infrastructure awards to universities like NIHR Biomedical Research Centres (BRC), NIHR Applied Research Collaborations (ARC), and the NIHR Schools (Public Health, Primary Care, Social Care) will often have dedicated funding to support some PhD fellowships. It is worth Googling and asking locally about any opportunities. Whilst these positions are usually competitively appointed, competition is likely to be considerably lower than for national NIHR and MRC schemes.

• NIHR / MRC: the NIHR Doctoral Training Fellowship (guidance) and MRC Predoctoral Clinical Research Training Fellowship (guidance) are highly prestigious, gold-standard fellowships. These fellowships cover research costs, fees, clinical salary, and extensive training opportunities - but they are also highly competitive. You will need to work closely with a senior academic to produce a credible research proposal - it's a good idea to start planning this at least 6-12 months ahead of your target submission deadlin.

If you are registered as a full-time student you will be eligible for a number of student discounts (regardless of how you are funded). Probably the most important of these are:

• If you no longer eligible for an 'age-based' railcard to get 1/3 off raile fares, as a 'mature' full-time student you can still apply for a 16-25 railcard.

• Full-time students are exempt from paying council tax.

I was the first PhD research fellow at the Global Surgery Unit. I was fortunate to have stipend and fees covered by a University of Birmingham Global Health Studentship that was available at that time. In the first year of my PhD I supplemented this with some on-call work and in the second year I has a small salary top-up from the unit's research funds.

We have had around 10 further PhD students go through the Global Surgery Unit in Birmingham since then with a variety of funding models tailored to individual needs. Two colleagues have secured presitious NIHR Doctoral Training Fellowships and we are keen to support anyone else interested in going for NIHR/ MRC fellowship funding.