GPs vote for Industrial action

What did you do after your five years at university?
My daughter spent twelve years after A levels in order to become a fully qualified GP.

when i was young most gps worked 5 days a week, unsure how much they earned? but nowadays,a lot of them are very wealthy, just look at how much a private consultation costs?I used to know a doctor who burnt out in his 40's. After a lot of time off, he returned to carry out medical report letters, hundreds of pounds a pop and that was 15 years ago! ive no idea what is really going on? from privatisation, to greed ........

In 1970- it was 135 hours per week for a junior doc in hospital and £ 1000 (in London) per year.

In 1974, 90 hours for £10.000 as Junior GP. 1 night in 3 or 4, and 1 weekend in 3 or 4- on top of long hours (not instead).

Wife/spouse was unable to work as had to be at home to take calls, night, day, weekend, unpaid.

maddyone

What did you do after your five years at university?
My daughter spent twelve years after A levels in order to become a fully qualified GP.

30years with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice and they are now a shambles as well

No one has explained why they think the BMA has gone for the guns blazing approach with the new Labour regime. How many hours were spent talking to Wes Streeting I wonder?
Can’t exactly blame the GPs but I do wonder where the head of NHS England stands in all this? As for trying to reduce the waiting lists for NHS treatment, how will this be impacted?

Most practices either employ a Salary GP, they obviously get a set amount of pay, quite a few part time GP's tend to be on Contract. Or they become Partners (who originally paid into the Partnership ) they are the ones who carry the responsibility of the way that practice is run.
They do get a bonus about every 6 months. Which tends to be a substantial amount.

It's a business, even the Practice Manager can be a Partner.
They do and have to make money, in various ways, eg Government incentives, education/Training others, they also get set amount per patient who they have on their books etc.
However all cost have to be covered, rent, staff etc that's when it get harder, a lot now have access to a Business manager, but more help is needed.

Fleurpepper

Wife/spouse was unable to work as had to be at home to take calls, night, day, weekend, unpaid.

That is one experience, but my Sis in Law was a single mum and a GP.
Phone calls went to the surgery and her little boy was at childminder until she got home in the evening.
Overnight calls were on a rota and her DM used to go and stay overnight every weekend SIL was on call.

Very rare- someone had to be at home to take calls- and normally it was the 'wife'- very rarely another membr of the family, unpaid. As said on a 1 night in 4, or 3, when a partner away or sick- and that was on top of full days. There were no portable phones until 'the brick', and that didn't work in rural areas.

homefarm

maddyone

What did you do after your five years at university?
My daughter spent twelve years after A levels in order to become a fully qualified GP.

30years with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice and they are now a shambles as well

The question as I read it, meant 'how many years of study'.

Sadly many “professions/vocations” especially for men depended on the services of the unpaid partner- doctors, clergy among others. Even my mother would have to field business calls at home out of regular office hours and simply refused to do more than refer them to the office number during office hours!
I suspect your DH and my SIL are of a similar vintage (70’s) and nobody would argue the conditions were ideal. But if you predicate an efficient service on unpaid assistance and unpaid overtime (like teachers) you are setting the system up to fail when the professionals and their partners say No more.

Ours has a very very good practice manager, I think it makes all the difference.

But the practice has to be big enough to pay out for this business management .

(7 GP's ,6 are partners, once P/T non partner).

Also 2 Physician Associates who see patients referred by doctor for chronic help,

3 nurses, all high level specialists in different fields,

3 pharmacists, (2 are assistants),

and 2 healthcare assistants (bloods, etc).

Reception team.

cc

Urmstongran

Any medic with any integrity needs to cancel their membership of this vile organisation and make a stand. I know of three who have.

I'm not sure if they can actually continue to work as doctors in the UK if they don't belong to the BMA?

They can. There are alternative unions!

There is no logic in calling an organisation vile because it ballots its members and then recommends action based on what they vote for. What would be the point of being in any union if it didn’t support the wishes of its members?

RosiesMaw2

Sadly many “professions/vocations” especially for men depended on the services of the unpaid partner- doctors, clergy among others. Even my mother would have to field business calls at home out of regular office hours and simply refused to do more than refer them to the office number during office hours!
I suspect your DH and my SIL are of a similar vintage (70’s) and nobody would argue the conditions were ideal. But if you predicate an efficient service on unpaid assistance and unpaid overtime (like teachers) you are setting the system up to fail when the professionals and their partners say No more.

Oh agreed. But in those days, there was no discussion and no choice. It was what it was. Qualified UCH 1969.

The arrival of reliable mobile phones changed my life, and finally allowed me to go back to Uni and get my B.Ed.Hons. Would not have been possible before.

Just saying that, like many things, it has gone from extreme to extreme, sublime to the ridiculous. Explaining why I feel conflicted and confused about the current situation and GPs feeling they are working too hard.

Casdon

There is no logic in calling an organisation vile because it ballots its members and then recommends action based on what they vote for. What would be the point of being in any union if it didn’t support the wishes of its members?

Also,- how come unions/professional associations are dreadful organisations. What a strange view of the organisations that represent its members

Unions offer support and assistance to members in all kinds of situations and our doctors. This includes legal

Numbers of doctors in the BMA has risen, not fallen.

www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/bma-membership-hits-record-high-highlighting-doctors-support-for-industrial-action.

the BMA offers professional support in many areas related to work:

www.bma.org.uk/member-benefits/member-benefits-for-gps#:~:text=The%20BMJ%20Stay%20up%2Dto,free%20initial%20consultations%20and%20webinars.

without them the junior doctors would till be on £14 a week.

Hospital doctors have the alternative of joining the Hospital doctors Association, however the same concerns are voiced.

"Fix medical pay to retain doctors in the NHS
Develop doctors at every stage of the career arc
A robust workforce that recognises doctors’ status
Make the health service a safe place to work
Fund a health service fit for future challenges

www.hcsa.com

Should stop overpaying BBC employee s and get MPs on a more reasonable wage After all they don't even have to attend parliament don't have to meet the local people if they don't want and don't they usually have time for another job Do the lord's get paid Time people like Doctors got what they deserve

My daughter was a partner at her Practice and she most certainly did not get a bonus every six months! In fact, as I mentioned upthread, in the last year of working in this country she had to take a cut in pay, as did the other partners, because the Practice was underfunded. All partners ‘buy in.’ That’s means they basically take out a mortgage so that they can ‘buy in’ and they pay the funds to the Practice, then they pay back the money to the lender month by month, out of their pay, just like paying a mortgage. When they leave, usually because of retirement, they take out their portion and the Practice needs to find another GP who will agree to buy in and become a partner, so,that they can continue to run the Practice. Increasingly GPs are preferring to be salaried, which causes difficulties sometimes because the Practice can be short of funds. It was two full years before the Practice could afford to pay back my daughter after she left, and it was a substantial sum of money, since the cost of buying in is not cheap.

Did your daughter make any profit on the sale of her share of the gp partnership maddyone?

ronib

Did your daughter make any profit on the sale of her share of the gp partnership maddyone?

That’s none of our business ronib, what a very inappropriate question. If I asked you how much you earned, would you say?

Casdon. As usual you have missed the point. You are aware that private US health insurance companies are buying up gps practices?
In the olden days, gps were not driven by financial gain.
It’s entirely appropriate to ask maddyone if her gp daughter profited from selling her share of the practice. It’s her choice not to tell.

I don’t think so ronib, I could see you coming a mile off.

Casdon likewise

I don’t know if she made any profit on the sale of her share because I wasn’t rude enough to ask her. Suffice it to say that she moved to New Zealand (where the situation for GPs is little different than the UK) anyway she moved under coercion because she was married to a coercive controlling man. Her situation is not happy as although she has left him, she cannot leave NZ to return to the UK, as she wishes because he will not allow the children to return to the country of their birth. She has even had to go to court to get permission to bring them home for a visit at Christmas, so my daughter’s situation is anything but ideal, separated from her family and all support (that’s what controllers do, seek to separate the person they are controlling from friends and family.) I do know that he took part of the money saying it was his as they were married when she paid it. She currently works four jobs to pay for the things her children need as well as living costs, she works as a GP, she works for a private clinic which caters for menopausal women (she did extra training for this) and she works at home, all online, during the evening, she works some shifts in ED (like our A+E) some evenings till 11.00pm and after working as a GP in the day, and she did extra training to become a forensic examiner of women who have been raped/abused. This is only when the police call her out and when she can be available. She feels very strongly about this because she was abused in her marriage.
Now I’ve never written so many details on this site about what she has endured, but the suggestion that she is somehow taking from the system (she only took what was legitimately hers) needs to have the record set straight.