To think large proportions of the population do not understand how consultant job plans work?

I think you’re talking crap. Most consultants are utterly swamped and are these days working as hard as young doctors, because there are fewer of them than there were, and a huge caseload. I think your post has an ulterior motive.

I think it's fairly widely appreciated that most public bodies waste inordinate amounts of money on consultants. I am sure it's even more frustrating from the inside I work a lot with the European Commission, and the waste of time, money and resources is phenomenal. It's also probably fair to say that most people won't concern themselves with the details for each public body they cross paths with though.

The OP isn't writing this so we understand the role of a consultant, but so we see how much time is at best non clinical or at worst wasted! OPs opinion is that a lot of time is wasted.

Thank you @Nameychangington for your post. My one was written with pure emotion

This enrages me as a wife of a gp who busts his guts keeping on top of pathology, test results, management of staff etc etc. And yet consultants are seen as 'better than a gp. No wonder consultants generally all look healthy, well dressed and balanced in life.
I shall now await the responses from consultants/ family members who tell me i am very wrong

So who is monitoring all this? Who makes sure that a Consultant has carried out all their clinic hours?
Or supervision hours?

Can other staff report them?
What happens if they don't meet their obligations?

Why would anyone other than a consultant or someone who works in HR at a hospital know any of it?

It's unnecessary information that the general public have absolutely no control over or influence over.

All we need to know is the doctor or medical person we see at any pay grade is competent and experienced and capable of the task at hand.

I hope the incidents of slackness you describe aren't typical, OP. I assumed that most consultants are worked off their feet.

Google informed me that PA stands for Programmed Activity, a block of four hours. It would have been easier to understand if you'd explained that.

Could we have a TL:DR please. I've tried to wade through all that but don't really understand what point you're making.

@Nameychangington thanks for putting the other side forward. Good to see other perspectives too.

Yep..I didn't know...and not sure how I'm going to use that information in the rest of my life.

You’ve outlined the issues. What are the ‘obvious fixes’ that you’d put in place?

What you describe isn't anything like the actual working practices of any of the consultants In work with.

They runs clinics which are overbooked every single session, so in a clinic which officially runs 9-12 they are actually seeing patients 7.30-3, with no coffee break let alone lunch break. 3 times every week. Then all the work they should have been doing that afternoon has to be done afterwards.

They routinely stay way past their working hours to check on inpatients, to come back and see a patient who didn't take in the information they were given, to answer queries from regs, including advising over the phone while on holiday.

They spend their evenings writing applications to drug companies for compassionate access to drugs.

One part time consultant I work with comes to MDT every week on her supposed day off.

There's a lot wrong with how the system is set up (consultants don't really have a manager, so if they're, ahem, 'eccentric' in some way it's hard to address it) but laziness or taking the piss doesn't feature at my place of work. Maybe you need to move to a different hospital.

People can’t seem to read past your title and are having fun thinking they sound clever when they’re showing their lack of comprehension again.

This was really interesting OP and I appreciate you explaining it. It sounds like the brilliant and diligent ones work really hard but there’s a lot of wiggle room for those that are not to earn the same, or more, for doing less. Doesn’t that really piss off the diligent ones? Or are they too run off their feet to fully notice? Do they have to pick up the slack or is it always the patients taking the brunt? Presumably supporting staff taking the brunt too.

Im sat here with my head in my hands.

I finally understand why we are haemorrhaging money to the NHS. And the problems the OP outline are a symptom, not the cause.

The root cause can be seen in the majority of the responses. It seems most people really just gleefully don’t give a shit.

They want NHS consultants to be the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain and just make it all work. And this is why some feckless consultants can play the system.

😂How much do consultants know about being a contract hospital cleaner? Or a TA in a busy run down primary school? Or working at a Recycling Centre.

This is just batshit.

Agreed

Why would large proportions of the population know that?

This.

Obviously large swathes of the public don't know how my job is structured.

I wouldn't expect them to.

You missed the bit where the consultant contract is nominally 40 hours a week but theatre staff are on 37.5 hours per week.

On the flip side my consultant colleagues do not do private work, and I regularly see them in the department working on their “days off” or “annual leave”. Don’t assume what happens in your department is the same elsewhere!

Thank you for the job you do, first of all. You are right, I don’t understand how your job works, and frankly having read your post I still don’t. Luckily I don’t need to, as long as you do! Lots of jobs are pretty incomprehensible to outsiders, plus there are frequently assumptions made, ie people think they know what a job is and does, but don’t in reality. I work in HR and it never ceases to amaze me what people think I and my team do and don’t do as a profession, lol.

Of course the general public can’t be expected to know this, why on earth should they? Do they need to know the finer details and intricacies of every single job role?

Nor do they particularly care. They just want the system to function.

Of course we don’t understand, it’s not our place to be told and there is no need for us to know.

I admire your dedication to your job and you must be fantastic to get to that level so I applaud you for that. I also thank you for your commitment to the NHS and you have my upmost respect but hells teeth, I have no idea what any of those descriptions mean 😂

Sometimes when surgeons operate the will have a trainee with them for teaching. This takes longer which is why some lists are shorter than others. In private practice this is a less likely scenario which is why they can see more patients and move through a list quicker. (I work in postgraduate medical training.)