> On Thursday, the new health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, is due to set out a plan to tackle the growing crisis in the NHS ahead of what bosses and senior doctors fear will be a very tough winter in which whole areas of care could fall over.
Well, it’s over anyway if she’s planning it.
People complain about their local GP surgery but it is a tiring job that gets a lot of criticism from people who know nothing about medicine or being a doctor. It is things like that which are seeing GPs leave the UK, retire early or just leave the profession. You see the same in teaching, which attracts a similar sort of criticism in the media. The government is also failing to train, recruit and retain GPs, which means we have a pathetic GP to patient ratio. Norway has twice the GPs per 1000 people that we do. It is easy to say the service at your local GP is getting worse, I know mine is, however that is only natural when you have fewer GPs having to deal with more patients.
12 years is enough time to recruit and train at least a cohort of GPs
I think I read that “part-time” in medicine is still about 50 hours.
My daughter is in medical school and has ruled out going the GP route because it is seemingly hated by the British public. Being a GP just seems to bring abuse and yet she will have taken on a very large student debt and extensive training to get that far. Mind you, I’ve also advised her that she might want to think of working overseas for better working conditions, better pay… and selfishly I wouldn’t mind spending winters in warmer climes when visiting.
GP is known as a far more flexible training pathway and career, in a profession known for how challenging it is to have a home/personal life alongside it. It’s probably its biggest selling point. If (as some of the public seem to suggest) you took away the ability to work part time, people would leave GP entirely and the effect of people then choosing NOT to train as a GP means there would very quickly be even fewer appointments than before.
I really can’t wrap my head around the people who want to train to be doctors at all, never mind GPs, meh pay, awful hours, near a decade of training before the pay even approaches decent, literal life and death responsibility and relatively low top end pay compared to much less stressful roles in other industries (unless you move to the US, then at least the top end pay seems like it might be worth it…).
You must have to be an actual saint to want to do that
Me and my husband, both UK trained GPs, moved to Sweden 2 years ago. We both worked full time plus evening/weekend clinics for extended hours service until then, would come home after 7pm regular and continue the paper work in the evenings/weekends from home trying to catch up. 10 min per patient was just not realistic, saw 26-28 patients a day. Imagine taking a history, examining the patient and then doing the documentation in a medicolegally sturdy way in 10 mins!? Of course spent much longer with patients who needed it and run late all the time. Left all the documentation to the end of the day to minimise the wait and annoyance for the patients in the waiting room. Extremely stressful and mentally draining set up. A GP in Sweden sees 7-8 patients a day, 30 min appointments per patient and even that feels too short at times if you need to do a proper examination and history taking. It took me ages to get used to undressing patients to examine after I started working here. I was so used to examining people dressed to save time. It has gotten worse since we left in the whole NHS. Heartbreaking to watch but it reflects what is happening to the rest of the country. It is not just healtcare that is collapsing unfortunately. Know many doctors moving abroad, changing careers or dropping sessions to survive mentally.
It’s not exactly news though.
>This year less than a third of trainees said they intended to work full-time (defined as eight or more half-day sessions per week) a year after qualifying, dropping to less than five per cent ten years after qualifying, **which largely mirrors previous years’ survey results**.
More power to them. The demands and stress are really unreasonable. The constant demands to do more with less give no consideration for the human beings actually doing the work.
We need to break the cycle of the NHS surviving purely on the good will of workers and elect politicians who will fund it adequately.
My oldest friend is a part-time GP.
He works over 50 hours a week.
We should all be pushing to work part time. There’s still enough money and things to make the world go round. Heaven forbid we don’t get squeezed for every last drop of productivity. There would be more jobs too.
Who can blame them, the stresses and strains of the job are very hard to bear and the pay is such that most of them can afford a three or four day week, but that’s better than the alternative, which is they work full time for five years, burn out then go abroad for twice the money and half the stress
I’m not a go, but a hospital doctor and work part-time. But took a yougov survey a while back and was told that my hours were considered full time by them (36hrs a week).
GP hours are worse than hospitals and they are end up doing more unpaid hours than hospital doctors. They are expected to do more and more in the same time and with the same resources. I’ve got many friends who are GPs. Some have become partners in their practices, but lots have decided to be salaried GPs as it gets a better lifestyle even with long hours
Studying medicine is considered a path to success in other countries or at least they get some good rep. Even if you end up being a GP, running a clinic is pretty profitable in other countries. Out of all the culture shock I got from the UK, this was the biggest.
Good, You people demonised your medical professionals, called them lazy worthless leaches without even looking at what they do. Will justify physical and mental abuse towards them because of your stress. Press for them to be forced to only work full time because you like your needs to be looked at only yet they do more hours than you on averaged even if part time.
You drank deep of the government coolaid in your dumb need to place blame.
Here is your new bed that you made lie in it.
Just use google you all seem to think it is better anyway.
The fact that it is apparently just normal to expect a doctor to 40+ hours in a week *while still being classed as only part time* surely has something to do with it. Just a thought. What the fuck is full time then 60 hours? Who the hell could work that at *any* job without burning out let alone a job like theirs?
I really want to help people, I want to be a doctor, I want to help cure people, but only 3/4 days a week though. Want to help people but only on a part time basis? ……….. the mindset of these clowns is ridiculous. If you`re not fully committed don`t bother training to be a doctor. This smacks of the old, `I want all the money and status but not the hard graft to earn it`. Get back in your place of work and earn your money. Doctors are a face to face job, not over zoom and not part time. People need help and diagnosing everyday, not just a few days a week. Outrageous attitude to have for someone who`s supposed to be clever, kind, caring, empathetic and sympathetic.
I don’t blame them. I even pity my own GP trying to deal with my issues.
Dental practices are already refusing to take on and/or offering 5/6 month waiting lists for anyone that wants to be treated on the NHS.
It’s like politicians are purposely trying to strangle the NHS which is a travesty. Time for torches and pitch forks at Westminster?
Disclaimer: I’m not inciting violence so don’t ban me!
Maybe some of you british people should watch your weight and stop being such a drag on the system
20 comments
> On Thursday, the new health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, is due to set out a plan to tackle the growing crisis in the NHS ahead of what bosses and senior doctors fear will be a very tough winter in which whole areas of care could fall over.
Well, it’s over anyway if she’s planning it.
People complain about their local GP surgery but it is a tiring job that gets a lot of criticism from people who know nothing about medicine or being a doctor. It is things like that which are seeing GPs leave the UK, retire early or just leave the profession. You see the same in teaching, which attracts a similar sort of criticism in the media. The government is also failing to train, recruit and retain GPs, which means we have a pathetic GP to patient ratio. Norway has twice the GPs per 1000 people that we do. It is easy to say the service at your local GP is getting worse, I know mine is, however that is only natural when you have fewer GPs having to deal with more patients.
12 years is enough time to recruit and train at least a cohort of GPs
I think I read that “part-time” in medicine is still about 50 hours.
My daughter is in medical school and has ruled out going the GP route because it is seemingly hated by the British public. Being a GP just seems to bring abuse and yet she will have taken on a very large student debt and extensive training to get that far. Mind you, I’ve also advised her that she might want to think of working overseas for better working conditions, better pay… and selfishly I wouldn’t mind spending winters in warmer climes when visiting.
GP is known as a far more flexible training pathway and career, in a profession known for how challenging it is to have a home/personal life alongside it. It’s probably its biggest selling point. If (as some of the public seem to suggest) you took away the ability to work part time, people would leave GP entirely and the effect of people then choosing NOT to train as a GP means there would very quickly be even fewer appointments than before.
I really can’t wrap my head around the people who want to train to be doctors at all, never mind GPs, meh pay, awful hours, near a decade of training before the pay even approaches decent, literal life and death responsibility and relatively low top end pay compared to much less stressful roles in other industries (unless you move to the US, then at least the top end pay seems like it might be worth it…).
You must have to be an actual saint to want to do that
Me and my husband, both UK trained GPs, moved to Sweden 2 years ago. We both worked full time plus evening/weekend clinics for extended hours service until then, would come home after 7pm regular and continue the paper work in the evenings/weekends from home trying to catch up. 10 min per patient was just not realistic, saw 26-28 patients a day. Imagine taking a history, examining the patient and then doing the documentation in a medicolegally sturdy way in 10 mins!? Of course spent much longer with patients who needed it and run late all the time. Left all the documentation to the end of the day to minimise the wait and annoyance for the patients in the waiting room. Extremely stressful and mentally draining set up. A GP in Sweden sees 7-8 patients a day, 30 min appointments per patient and even that feels too short at times if you need to do a proper examination and history taking. It took me ages to get used to undressing patients to examine after I started working here. I was so used to examining people dressed to save time. It has gotten worse since we left in the whole NHS. Heartbreaking to watch but it reflects what is happening to the rest of the country. It is not just healtcare that is collapsing unfortunately. Know many doctors moving abroad, changing careers or dropping sessions to survive mentally.
It’s not exactly news though.
>This year less than a third of trainees said they intended to work full-time (defined as eight or more half-day sessions per week) a year after qualifying, dropping to less than five per cent ten years after qualifying, **which largely mirrors previous years’ survey results**.
Although conspicuously absent from the Guardian article AND the report, I wonder if this has anything to do with it: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/9950248/Part-time-women-doctors-are-creating-a-timebomb.html](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/9950248/Part-time-women-doctors-are-creating-a-timebomb.html)
?
More power to them. The demands and stress are really unreasonable. The constant demands to do more with less give no consideration for the human beings actually doing the work.
We need to break the cycle of the NHS surviving purely on the good will of workers and elect politicians who will fund it adequately.
My oldest friend is a part-time GP.
He works over 50 hours a week.
We should all be pushing to work part time. There’s still enough money and things to make the world go round. Heaven forbid we don’t get squeezed for every last drop of productivity. There would be more jobs too.
Who can blame them, the stresses and strains of the job are very hard to bear and the pay is such that most of them can afford a three or four day week, but that’s better than the alternative, which is they work full time for five years, burn out then go abroad for twice the money and half the stress
I’m not a go, but a hospital doctor and work part-time. But took a yougov survey a while back and was told that my hours were considered full time by them (36hrs a week).
GP hours are worse than hospitals and they are end up doing more unpaid hours than hospital doctors. They are expected to do more and more in the same time and with the same resources. I’ve got many friends who are GPs. Some have become partners in their practices, but lots have decided to be salaried GPs as it gets a better lifestyle even with long hours
Studying medicine is considered a path to success in other countries or at least they get some good rep. Even if you end up being a GP, running a clinic is pretty profitable in other countries. Out of all the culture shock I got from the UK, this was the biggest.
Good, You people demonised your medical professionals, called them lazy worthless leaches without even looking at what they do. Will justify physical and mental abuse towards them because of your stress. Press for them to be forced to only work full time because you like your needs to be looked at only yet they do more hours than you on averaged even if part time.
You drank deep of the government coolaid in your dumb need to place blame.
Here is your new bed that you made lie in it.
Just use google you all seem to think it is better anyway.
The fact that it is apparently just normal to expect a doctor to 40+ hours in a week *while still being classed as only part time* surely has something to do with it. Just a thought. What the fuck is full time then 60 hours? Who the hell could work that at *any* job without burning out let alone a job like theirs?
I really want to help people, I want to be a doctor, I want to help cure people, but only 3/4 days a week though. Want to help people but only on a part time basis? ……….. the mindset of these clowns is ridiculous. If you`re not fully committed don`t bother training to be a doctor. This smacks of the old, `I want all the money and status but not the hard graft to earn it`. Get back in your place of work and earn your money. Doctors are a face to face job, not over zoom and not part time. People need help and diagnosing everyday, not just a few days a week. Outrageous attitude to have for someone who`s supposed to be clever, kind, caring, empathetic and sympathetic.
I don’t blame them. I even pity my own GP trying to deal with my issues.
Dental practices are already refusing to take on and/or offering 5/6 month waiting lists for anyone that wants to be treated on the NHS.
It’s like politicians are purposely trying to strangle the NHS which is a travesty. Time for torches and pitch forks at Westminster?
Disclaimer: I’m not inciting violence so don’t ban me!
Maybe some of you british people should watch your weight and stop being such a drag on the system