Not all ship doctors earn the same salary, which may differ greatly among different cruise lines. Cruise ship jobs, including medical personnel joining the medical team on the ship, are advertised regularly.

The job of a ship's doctor is to provide medical care for the staff and passengers traveling on these ships. However, the question often arises: what salaries do these ship doctors earn when they join any of these cruise ships?

What Do Cruise Doctors Do?

Some people may think that the doctor in the medical center of a cruise ship is just there to provide a band-aid and headache pills. But that is very far from the truth; a cruise ship's medical center contains the same equipment you will find in a small hospital.

This includes an intensive care unit, a high-dependency ward, and an emergency unit that does not include the general ward. They usually have a team of nurses and sometimes two doctors—a junior and a senior doctor—per team.

Cruise doctors provide standard emergency medicine for any ailment that may occur among passengers or staff members of the ship. A medical center on a cruise ship has all the emergency equipment and personnel you will find in a normal hospital.

This means that a cruise doctor must also be able to perform those types of services when they occur on a ship. A standard cruise ship can easily have 5,000+ people aboard, which is the same as in a small town.

Life onboard a ship may be fun for the passengers, but that is not the case most of the time for cruise ship doctors. You will be out on the sea for long periods, so all the people on that ship are the responsibility of the doctors.

The clinic hours on a cruise ship may be long and exhausting, so you will work hard for every dollar you earn. You will also work seven days per week on a cruise ship while it is out at sea, so there is very little rest for the weary.

A large ship has a complement of 1,000 crew members and about 4,000 passengers on a single trip, which may keep you very busy. When you get sick, it is safer on a cruise line than at home.

At home, you need to wait for an ambulance, but while on a cruise ship, the emergency personnel is always available where you need them. That is because they are only a short distance away from you and can be on the scene in a very short time.

The healthcare facilities and services on a cruise ship are state-of-the-art and must meet specific standards for it to stay in business. So you can be sure you will get just as good, if not better, treatment from a ship doctor than at home.

In most cases, more than just one doctor is available on a cruise ship, so you can immediately go. Extensive onboard training is also available for all medical personnel to be efficient in this environment.

Overall, the doctors on a cruise ship are even more qualified to provide passengers with only the best medical services. This will be an invaluable experience for anyone trained to become a doctor, which can be used in their future career.

Personnel You May Find in a Ship's Medical Center

A cruise ship physician will be in charge of a full complement of a standard medical emergency center you find in any town. This will include nurses, paramedics, and other hospital personnel to keep the center in peak condition all the time.

A medical center on a cruise ship will keep the same records you will find in hospitals of all patients and their treatments. This means that there must also be an administrative department to keep these records safe and up to date as they change.

There should also be a dispensary where drugs are kept and issued when needed, which will need a pharmacist. 24/7 medical services are provided to the passengers and crew members.

A medical emergency can happen anytime and anywhere, so they must be ready to react promptly. Doctors on a cruise ship do not have office hours; they must be available for 24 hours while the ship is out at sea.

That means they must always be available for a medical emergency and be ready to help when needed.

Standard Salaries For Cruise Doctors

The industrial standard of salaries for junior doctors working on cruisers can be anything from $9,000 to $12,000 per month. For senior physicians, it can start at $12,000 and go as high as $14,000 monthly.

Not all cruise lines offer the same salary for ship doctors, but you can expect anything from $8,000 up to $14,000. Some doctors will stay with a specific cruise line for many years to enjoy the benefits of the job.

This will include free food and an officer’s single cabin as accommodation, and they get to see many places around the world. 

The average benefits for cruise ship doctors are usually the same as most cruise lines, including free vacation travel. Junior doctors earn as low as $7,500 per month at some cruise lines, while senior doctors earn $12,000 and more.

Contracts for working on some cruise lines are typically four and two months of vacation, but not all are the same.

What Cruise Lines Are the Best To Work For

One of the very popular cruise lines to work for is the Royal Caribbean, as it has very competitive salaries and a rewarding work environment. Working with this cruise line is great if you want to see many different places when you are working with them.

They also have a variety of ship sizes available, and if you are on a larger ship, your life will be full and fast-paced. Another cruise line is Princess Cruises, which also offers a lot of jobs for the medical profession and especially for doctors.

Most cruise lines provide very close or slightly higher salaries than the industry standard for doctors working on cruise ships. You will not get a lot of leave per year, which in some cases is only two weeks per year while working for them.

Other cruise lines, such as Carnival Cruise Lines and Costa Cruises, occasionally look for medical personnel. Then there are also Norwegian Cruise Lines and Morella Cruise Lines, to name only a few of a very long list of cruise lines.

There are hundreds of cruise lines worldwide, and all of them need doctors on board to look after the passengers. 

Who Can Apply for These Jobs

Anyone qualified as a medical doctor can apply for a ship’s physician’s job on a cruise ship. The requirements are a professional medical degree and at least three years of experience in specific fields of the medical profession.

Other requirements include fluency in the English language and basic and advanced life support certifications.