to think that all GP's (Doctors) work part-time?

[popcornwizard]

Based on my tiny personal knowledge of 4 GP's that are friends, and a couple of others that are friends of friends etc, I'm coming to the conclusion that they all work part-time hours. Is this real? Or is it just the ones that I know. I have no idea whether any of the GP's at 'my' practice work full-time or not, but at least 3 of them work only two days/week.

So AIBU to think that they're a bunch of part-timers? And what causes this? Stress or lucrative locum contracts?

Fortunately, as we live in a democratic society anyone with the correct level of education can go to medical school and train to be a GP. So, OP crack on and get started and then you can be one of these part timers that you are so envious of!

I do eight sessions - so four full days. That averages about 44 hours a week. On top of that I do courses (I am entitled to 4 days study leave a year but it's nowhere near enough to cover the relevant CPD and all the courses I need seem to fall on my day 'off'!). The courses cost me at least £1000 a year, on average.
I tend to come in on a weekend or my day off a couple of times a month as I get behind with admin. I also help with teaching of students and trainee GPs in my spare time for free but I don't have to do that, obviously.
I frequently am returning phone calls to patients at 8pm which they seem surprised by as the practice closes at 6 30. I start at 8am.
I am paid well above the national average salary for this work, so I'm not exactly hard done by. My husband is a lawyer and works about the same hours as me but spread over five days and earns 50% more. He says he could never do my job, but I don't much fancy his either!
My friends with similar grades at school have much better paid jobs than me in the private sector.

I love some elements of my job but if I knew then what I know now I would never have chosen to be a GP, I'm not even sure I'd have chosen to do medicine but definitely not GP.

I have never locummed but am considering dropping a day to work as a GP in a&e / walk in or in a hospice post instead because I'm getting really run down by it all (not so much the face to face apointments, it's all the other crap we have to do that you probably don't see!).

Hope that helps!

I just don't understand this thread really. Unless I'm missing something I thought full time hours in the UK are usually around 35 - 40 hours per week. When I worked in an office before becoming a SAHM, my full time hours were 37.5 per week.

So a GP working 3 x 12 hours days, equalling 36 hours seems pretty full time to me, although they are not working all five 'work' days of the week.

This is just like lots of other 12 hour shift jobs.

My FIL was in the police force and is now a paramedic, and he's done 12 hour shift rosters at various points in is careers, with no one questioning him about it? This is the same as my SIL who works in childcare full time and her hours are spread over 4 days of the week, not 5.

My sister is a doctor with a young Son, and works in a hospital as a locum as she couldn't find any wrap around childcare that would allow her to work a 12 hour hospital shift pattern, and so can only work on weekends when her DH (who works mon-fri) can do childcare. With all the extra hours she has to put in to continually train and be appraised, as all doctors have to, I could easily see that that would push a GP over into full time hours, even if they only did 2 days a week in a surgery face to face with patients.

My DH is a GP and up until this year has worked full time (minimum 60 hours a week). He is now the senior partner in the practice and earlier this year he decided to no longer works Monday .

We’re likely to leave the UK next year due to Brexit (DH is French Canadian and I’m Belgian). None of the other GP’s in the practice (central London) are British and are now looking for jobs outside of the UK. The practice will probably then close as there is such a shortage of GP’s.

Training doctors SHOULD be expensive; our lives are literally in their hands and they should be bloody well trained and paid for it.

I don’t want a stressed and exhausted doctor caring for me and my family; I want them to be fresh and alert and happy in their job so that they can do it to the best of their ability.

The stupidity of posters like walkingdeadfangirl is extremely depressing. Everyone has a right to a work-life balance. We should invest a lot of money in the health service because it’s incredibly important. It’s not somewhere to cut corners!

The threads on this topic that are suddenly bubbling up together are suspicious. I really hope we aren’t now in for an influx of GP-bashing after teachers and nurses have had their turn. Someone out there is clearly trying to whip up public feeling against them. Of course, this is because the Tories have run the NHS into the ground and now want to ensure people blame the staff who are trying to do their jobs in difficult circumstances rather than the government who have deliberately made the service worse for patients.

I will get flamed for this but I don't think they have any more stress than other professional jobs

Utter rubbish. You must be being goady because no one could be this stupid. Of course a job where you have to make actual life and death decisions is no more stressful than being an Accountant

I'm not even a GP and think you're being a GF. Sometimes one of that "bunch of part timers" is the one person who's putting 100% into their job and can make the difference. Fuck off.

I agree Captain! Excellent post.

Don't know what's stopping your, popcorn, from training up as a GP since it's such a cushy gig.

The massively inflated figures that are often quoted for doctors' 'training' in the papers usually includes their actual salaries for the first 5-10 years of 'training' until they become a specialist (consultant or GP etc)

'Training' after medical school involves doing the job, providing a service and maybe once a week having a teaching session. So if you think people that work part time should pay back their 'training' costs does that mean they should pay back 10 years worth of salary?!

Medical students these days come out of med school with £70,000 debt and start on salaries of £22,000. it's hardly the big bucks.

I'm not a GP but I work part time in a different field. I work 3 days a week plus some extra evenings and weekends. My hours average at 34 per week plus extra work to keep up on my days off. Don't get me wrong - I love my job. But it sucks when people wang on about what a charmed life we lead, tax payers money etc

XXcstatic,

v. interesting points thank you.

No one is going to be very sympathetic about pay (my GP friends make unbelievably tactless remarks and complaints about their pensions and pay.....I blame their union for telling them lies about what it's like in the private sector).

I am far more sympathetic to what you say about the sheer intensity during the same number of hours. Add in just the smallest fear of a mistake, or just one abusive patient and you must have a toxic mix. It must corrode you.

It's illegal (I think) to strike for what Drs really want which I imagine would be -

• longer appointment times
• more thinking time
• more autonomy and sense of ownership
• more allied professionals
• just less of a sense of time being so stretched always.
• times of less intensity

One gp I know is also an on call paramedic.

Most of the GPs at the surgery I'm registered with are female and many of them have young children so they work Part time. That means there are certain days that they are not at the surgery. I have no idea how many hours they work on the days that they are at the surgery but I suspect it is not just 9-6.

I'm not a Daily Mail reader myself, but GP friends and relatives have reported that they have been doing a good bit of GP bashing recently.

Of course, not specifying how many hours these so called part-timers actually work (I.e. normal full time hours).

Then matching it up with top rates that it might be possible if you worked every hour possible and took up every possible initiative.

So we end up with GPs apparently only doing 15 hours a week and earning 6 figure sums...

Great work if you could get it! But you can't.

My friend is a GP and works three days, but those days are 8am - 7pm normal surgery hours plus an evening shift. Which I am guessing is closer to my idea of full time.

My friend who is a GP does 3-4 hours work after a full day surgery. She gets paid for 2.5 days and works 30+ hours.

My OH was also a GP until last year. He left the house at 7.30 (30 min commute), worked 8-8 got home at 8.30. Part time he was doing this 4 days a week. He was contracted as a salaried p/t GP to work 3 days but the workload was such he had to do it over 4 days. For £35K a year. Plus his courses, CPD, business meetings, indemnity insurance, RC of GP fees, GMC fees, meaning that he then ended up doing out of hours shifts to have a holiday.
He left GP work last year and we plan to move to Canada.

I suspect it is like teaching etc in that contact hours are only a small part of the time you work.

THe training is 6 years (student) + 2 compulsory foundation years of work (almost 100% do that ful time) + specialist training (3-8 years on graded salary scale)

It makes no sense to pay for all that training and then only put half of it to use. Last time I looked medical degrees where oversubscribed. Maybe if it was made clear at the start the job would be full time it might put a few people off, but I bet the degrees will still be oversubscribed by highly qualified students.

"Part time" GP is usually more than every one else (including HMRC) think of as full time. It's a full on, draining, job.

They're not putting half that training to use. Nonsense.

If being a GP is such a doss, why is there a recruitment crisis?

Are you sure that you have four GP friends popcorn? I'm surprised that you haven't taken the trouble to ask them if indeed they are your friends.

As a GP, I find 'bunch of part timers' a really insulting turn of phrase.

As has been explained many times already on this thread, what may appear to the general public to be part time, eg three days, is actually full time because of the total hours worked.

Another mis conception is that some patients think that when the GP is not available to them, that they are not working. Apart from the mountains of paperwork/ admin work, GPs have a range of other roles from teaching to research to lecturing to working part time in the hospital trust, etc

There is also the commitment of CPD which is significant.

Apart from any of the above, GP work is much, much more intense than the huge majority of other jobs. The speed with which we are expected to work, the intensity of the work, the high level of risk and thought processing that it involved is really tiring and stressful.
These are the reasons that many GPs to not work 5 or even 3 days a week. If they were forced to, many would simply leave the profession altogether or emigrate.

WRT lawyer which I think someone mentioned, I have four in my immediate family and other friends/ acquaintances. Those in the high paid roles undoubtedly work very hard (different stress but definitely very hard). However, they get paid many multiples of what GPs earn. One of my relatives mentioned above is on nearer 7 figures as a partner in a city firm and some of her partners are on more. I am not suggesting that GPs in public service should be paid 7 figures but that there is a huge difference in pay.

@Walkingdeadfangirl

You are still missing the point.

Although a GP may be only available 3.5 days if the week for appointments at your surgery, they will still be working more than a normal full time job in terms of hours.

Or are you advocating going back to slavery so that your favourite GP could be available to you 24/7?

Exactly, why a recruitment crisis if being a GP is such an easy and well paid job.

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned the costs of indemnity insurance in case we are sued.
Something like 10,000 now for a full time GP.

my DD is a Jr Doctor working a 90 hr week in a central London hosptital.
thats is a NORMAL full time working week.
she may be doing CPR on your grand parents, putting in a chestdrain in your parents after a RTA, performorming an ECS on your sister, or removing your childs Appendix in that 90 hour week.
She wants to TTC before she is too old so guess what?
She is doing her GP training to work PART TIME a 40/50 hour week.
So far she has been a doctor for 7 years after studying for 5 years and it will be another 2 years before she can pass all the GP exams to enable her to work part-time.
She earns 34k for a min 90hour week
YABVVVVU

Walkingdeadfangirl Mon 26-Nov-18 17:27:16
As tax payers fund doctors very expensive training, I think it is entirely appropriate to make them contractually obliged to work full time. Or else they should start paying back the money we have spent training them into their very well remunerated jobs.

oh do fuck off with your non-sense. doctors pay off their 30/50k student loans like all other graduates