There is a significant brain drain happening in medicine now. I am in the age when I have too many ties to be upping sticks to Oz or Canada, and too many years away from retirement. Were I younger and no family I would have left, and were I older I would be looking at the earliest retirement date possible. Both of those age groups are having many people taking those options. I think people need to be ware a crisis is looming and doing things that make those choices even more obvious will not help anyone
Doctors and the 7 Day Week
- Thread starter Nitefly
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Not a clue. He is 29/30 owns a brand new Merc SLK, lives in a 3 bed detached house in Surbiton and is opening his own surgery soon.
My guess is he is doing it right.
Seems the popular thing to do - know a few people who have left for NZ as well as Australia or Canada.
I call ******** on you comments then given I know the way primary care works with regards contracts. I do not believe he is opening his own surgery soon, as you cannot simply just open up a surgery. The only way he could simply decide to open a practice is if he is working as a private doctor in which case all your comments about him are moot anyway. He can only have been qualified a max of 3 years as a GP anyway. The car you drive does not necessarily equate to your income
No, a 7 day service isn't in place. My gran spent 6 months in hospital over Christmas, weekends there were plenty of nurses and junior doctors, but no consultants. For 6 months. That is atrocious. She always had to wait until a Monday to be properly seen after any scares at the weekend.
Oh, and shift patterns. No need to work 7 days, work 5 and overlap people.
The message made by Hunt has been very poorly given, but it is necessary to get proper amounts of senior doctors working at a weekend.
Maybe he realises that, given one of his children was born in, cared for in, and died in NHS hospitals.
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So he's crying about making bad choices which are his fault? Okay
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I often see doctors incoherently spacking out on Facebook which erodes my sympathy somewhat.
agree. If it was like a big con and doctors didn't know what they were signing up for then i;d say yeah, they got mugged off. But they went into this with the eyes open and wanted a career in medicine. If they don't like then go to Pret on a zero hour contract and fill your boots with their organic green tea..................
So my Mrs who spends a lot of time in hospital appointments for an ongoing illness which she will have for the rest of her life and you say tough if you can't afford it, your an idiot greedy self centred person with no thought for humans in need, pathetic little man you are.
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The governments and medical associations created the requirements and barriers to entry in to becoming a doctor. This has reduced their supply to people who are willing to go through the motions and pay the money. In spite of all those years you still get a lot of bad doctors. A certificate could be had in another country at a lower standard and the NHS will accept that person just the same, as long as its approved by their medical association. As it costs so much for doctors to get an education they end up expecting a high salary, even though the work is not as magical as they think it is. A GP for example is not a difficult job relative to other jobs. While i think surgeons and ER doctors should be paid more. GP and nurses on the other hand are probably over paid and work far few hours. Because they are overpaid it is not affordable to hire more doctors and create more GP and nurses because they are under staffed. Which results in more work for GP and why it ends up taking 3 weeks to see a doctor in 2015, because there is not enough of them to meet the demand.
Of course the argument is that without the certificates there would be more risk. The NHS pays out £100s million per year in compensation for mistakes so its not without fault either in spite of the certifications. The point is that it should be up to the person on the street if they are willing to trust a doctor that doesn't drive a top of the range Mercedes and does not work weekends because he doesn't have a £50k student debt to pay off. Of course from customer perspective that is irrelevant with the NHS because it costs nothing. If it was not free to see a doctor and people had to pay based on the supply and demand for that doctor services based on his competency and so on, then we would see cheaper doctors that would have less competency. With it all being centralised it results in the situation we have now where its pots luck if you get a good or a bad GP.
Of course the argument is that without the certificates there would be more risk. The NHS pays out £100s million per year in compensation for mistakes so its not without fault either in spite of the certifications. The point is that it should be up to the person on the street if they are willing to trust a doctor that doesn't drive a top of the range Mercedes and does not work weekends because he doesn't have a £50k student debt to pay off. Of course from customer perspective that is irrelevant with the NHS because it costs nothing. If it was not free to see a doctor and people had to pay based on the supply and demand for that doctor services based on his competency and so on, then we would see cheaper doctors that would have less competency. With it all being centralised it results in the situation we have now where its pots luck if you get a good or a bad GP.
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There are 7 days in a week. But how many people (in any job) would want to work 7 days a week every week?
I think the Govt will fail miserably on this one because I don't believe there are enough staff to make this viable, unless they are going to reduce staffing levels during the week. I simply cannot see them finding the money to increase the workforce by the number necessary to make this work!
I think the Govt will fail miserably on this one because I don't believe there are enough staff to make this viable, unless they are going to reduce staffing levels during the week. I simply cannot see them finding the money to increase the workforce by the number necessary to make this work!
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The hundreds of billions paid out in 2009 and beyond to prop up the banking industry was wonderful wasn't it. Even better that we have such a lethargic, apathetic population that put up virtually no opposition to it. Nor did the population raise any expectations that the money would be paid back. Bravo. Roll on 6 years and we now see the fruits of that apathy. A goverment that creates more wealth for the wealthy and cuts vital services across the board. Congratulations uk, we are awesome.
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Nobody is saying that individuals should work 7 days a week....
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My private GP in South Africa used to work weekends. A lot of her business was on weekends, sunday was a reduced opening times. Because most people work during the week, weekends is a good time to make an appointment. Of course no one wants to work weekends but some industry have always worked weekends. I think it is a luxury of the centralised free for all healthcare system that GP are hardly open and have long wait for appointments. The south african private doctor didn't drive the latest Mercedes either.
I know you might think because it is SA it is going to be like that, but it looks like any NHS GP, https://goo.gl/maps/QbWPd In my opinion she was a better GP than any GP i have had on the NHS and she was not unaffordable like private GP in the uk.
A converted house or similar. I went to a GP in central london in a converted house.
It was a female doctor who owned it and she worked long hours because the more she put in, the more she made for herself.
It just shows that when the profit motive is taken away the doctors have no incentive to work and actually have a disincentive to work. Outside of arbitrary targets, it makes no difference to them if they see more customers, in fact they would rather there was less customers because they still get paid the same whether it is busy or not.
I know you might think because it is SA it is going to be like that, but it looks like any NHS GP, https://goo.gl/maps/QbWPd In my opinion she was a better GP than any GP i have had on the NHS and she was not unaffordable like private GP in the uk.
A converted house or similar. I went to a GP in central london in a converted house.
It was a female doctor who owned it and she worked long hours because the more she put in, the more she made for herself.
It just shows that when the profit motive is taken away the doctors have no incentive to work and actually have a disincentive to work. Outside of arbitrary targets, it makes no difference to them if they see more customers, in fact they would rather there was less customers because they still get paid the same whether it is busy or not.
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No but the reality is they are going to put pressure on existing staff to work more hours/days, increase performance, etc. rather than actually hire enough more staff to properly cover it.
Seems the way of many businesses at the moment, tighten and tighten their grip until all the good staff have left and all you have are the desperate, easily bulled/won't stand up for themselves, etc. and for the most part generally poor to average people and wonder why your business is failing.
My wife is a senior nurse. She worked 14 hours today, but gets paid less for overtime than she does for her contracted hours. She ate when she got home at 10pm because she didn't get a supper break tonight. She is on call tonight until 8 am tomorrow. She will be back at work at 9am tomorrow. This sort of thing is a regular occurrence, and I doubt she works less than an extra 8-10 hours most weeks, so she's already working an extra day. It happened tonight because instead of going home she had to oversee a second team of people that had also stayed late to do extra emergency work and treat more people. This was because the night shift and the emergency team were already working, but another person needed to have their life saved. If things had gone poorly, my wife could have had someone die under her care, and likely been dealing with the bereaved family late into the night too.
My wife reckons to run things properly, you'd need twice as many staff, which you should have paid to train up years ago. You'd also need to actually invest in hospitals. There's no point building more hi-tech operating theatres if you can't run them because even with all the staff, you don't have enough beds in recovery/ITU to deal with the people after they come out of their operations.
Simply thinking you can "work more at weekends" and fix everything shows the true scale of government ignorance, and how they are driven by ideology and not facts. Staff already work at weekends and extra hours, so how will things be helped if you take them from the weekdays and move them to weekends? I bet the government won't be actually spending more money for more staff to run these services.
My wife gets paid less than half of what an MP earns, despite extensive qualifications and experience, and has been capped to a 1 percent pay rise for the last few years and will be capped at 1 percent for the next few years too, her pay effectively going down.
In less than 24 hours, a petition from NHS staff of no confidence in Jeremy Hunt reached 100,000 signatures. This happened after he tweeted an "I'm at work" picture in response to the viral pictures of the same posted by NHS staff. Unfortunately, Hunt was stupid enough to do it in front of the ward board showing the personal/medical details of many patients.
My wife reckons to run things properly, you'd need twice as many staff, which you should have paid to train up years ago. You'd also need to actually invest in hospitals. There's no point building more hi-tech operating theatres if you can't run them because even with all the staff, you don't have enough beds in recovery/ITU to deal with the people after they come out of their operations.
Simply thinking you can "work more at weekends" and fix everything shows the true scale of government ignorance, and how they are driven by ideology and not facts. Staff already work at weekends and extra hours, so how will things be helped if you take them from the weekdays and move them to weekends? I bet the government won't be actually spending more money for more staff to run these services.
My wife gets paid less than half of what an MP earns, despite extensive qualifications and experience, and has been capped to a 1 percent pay rise for the last few years and will be capped at 1 percent for the next few years too, her pay effectively going down.
In less than 24 hours, a petition from NHS staff of no confidence in Jeremy Hunt reached 100,000 signatures. This happened after he tweeted an "I'm at work" picture in response to the viral pictures of the same posted by NHS staff. Unfortunately, Hunt was stupid enough to do it in front of the ward board showing the personal/medical details of many patients.
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See the smily? Its sarcasm. Sometimes its hard to get that across when its just words
Also, in all seriousness, i fear that is what we're heading towards. American style insurance based care.
And in USA 1 in 7 people are not insured. 46 million! That's the population of England!
I think you've got your notion of cause and effect wrong. If GPs are so underworked and overpaid relative to other medical specialties, why then, can they not find enough trainees to fill all their training posts? 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 remain unfilled the last time i heard.
See the smily? Its sarcasm. Sometimes its hard to get that across when its just words
Also, in all seriousness, i fear that is what we're heading towards. American style insurance based care.
And in USA 1 in 7 people are not insured. 46 million! That's the population of England!
My Apologises I get totally frustrated with the way things are going with this county, I feel when someone says something that could cause my Mrs even more pain than she has already been though I have to defend.
Soldato
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We are being told we will need to work weekends next year. One of the new shifts will mean I won't get to see my kids that entire week. These consultants can cry me a river. It's part of the modern world now. Just need to embrace it and enjoy the days off during the week. Make best of it.
EDIT: It's different for other staff within the NHS. I did over 5 years in the service and the lack of support and assistance for anyone who isn't a doctor is alarming. Very old fashioned hierarchy is still in place, way too much middle management.
EDIT: It's different for other staff within the NHS. I did over 5 years in the service and the lack of support and assistance for anyone who isn't a doctor is alarming. Very old fashioned hierarchy is still in place, way too much middle management.
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In my area I believe the recent intake was 51% filled only. For lolgroen's comments of it being an easy job I presume he has done it and knows what is involved? The fact that you have seen a GP and perhaps didn't like what they told you (I have no idea if that was right or wrong) doesn't mean you understand what they do. I'm pretty certain you aren't someone aged 85 with 3 or more chronic illnesses needing managed. I doubt you have a list of medications as long as your arm that needs to be balanced for safety, long term risk reduction, minimising side effects. A younger persons view of what a GP does is often very skewed as although we are the catch all for every medical issue the vast majority of what we do is not 30 year olds with coughs or indigestion. It isn't just someone to sign your sick note. So unless you are someone that regularly sees your GP then you probably have little clue. If you do regularly see them, then perhaps you do already value them
Always good to start with personal attacks!
So you know 3 - hardly a representative sample and not on the kind of money you was claiming only a few posts before ...
All the metrics are saying the same on actual performance but feel free to be flippant
Oh look a personal dig again. Maybe actual tackle the points raised rather than the poster ...
The point was people don't know if the actual care is good or not they don't have the capacity to make that judgement ...
There we go the little dig again. Life is fine for me just thanks.
