I’m a GP

[WutheringBites]

here’s the thing; I can’t get a job. And lots of us who completed training in the past two years can’t either. It’s a national problem (well, at least across England) and there’s thousands of us in the same boat.
I didn’t expect to earn millions as a doctor, but I did think there would always be work for a nice GP. AIBU?

I’d look into this op, my tiny town has two private gps and always are busy, plus I’ve used telephone appts with private gps.

Can you work away somewhere else in the UK & travel home at weekends ?
Car, train, fly

Work PT ?

What about volunteer with the Mercy boat or other medical teams abroad ?

😳😳😳😳😳😳😳
how awful

Ask your university for suggestions

Can you teach ?

I've seen lots of medical jobs on
www.gov.uk
Find a job

Our local surgeries have employed a lot of paramedic practitioners. They send them on house calls but they don’t have the depth and breadth of knowledge to be able to assess patients well enough so they send the majority to A&E for things like asymptomatic hypertension. Our A&E is drowning in primary care work but meanwhile GPs can’t get jobs. It’s an absolute joke.

I read posts like this and feel so fucking depressed. Its nigh on impossible to get to see a GP at my surgery now, as a pp said you can only ring at 8am, be on hold for about 20 mins only to be told there's no appointments left, ring again tomorrow. I would love to know who it is managing to actually access primary healthcare. :-(

I’m a GP close to retirement, and the increasing use of nurses and paramedics to do the work of GPs terrifies me. I’m not diminishing nurses/paramedics, and they do a wonderful job with minor illnesses, and particular topics they do additional training in (eg diabetes, asthma), but their training is totally different to the training doctors receive. They don’t have the depth and breadth of knowledge that doctors have, and simply aren’t able to draw up the same list of diagnostic possibilities when faced with a set of symptoms. A patient of ours has just died as a result of a prescribing nurse being out of her depth.

It’s a ticking time bomb .

Why do surgeries make it so hard for people
to get a GP appointment. Maybe they need fewer GPs because everyone’s so familiar with being unable to get an appointment that they don’t even bother trying anymore.

I agree. I work in a specialized field as an AHP and without being arrogant - I'm pretty good 👍. BUT, I never make the fatal mistake of thinking for one second that I have the depth and breadth of knowledge of a qualified doctor specialised in the same field as me. It's that depth and breath that truly seperates us. I've been encouraged to take on even more roles that breach the boundary of my code of conduct and will soon say this (no matter how good I am ) .

The trouble with some people in similar jobs to me is they're "badge/title" hungry and it's very very easy to start letting ego override. But that won't protect patients and there will be many a non medical practitioner that will fall fowl of this.

@MeganM3 I think you’re misunderstanding the situation. There aren’t as many GPs working as there used to be, because the funding isn’t there for them. Instead funding is given for paramedics and prescribing nurses, because per appointment they’re cheaper. Every working GP works flat out, from the minute they arrive at work to the minute they leave, usually about 12-14 hours later. Every appointment they have is filled. But there aren’t enough GP appointments, because the money isn’t there to pay for them.

This is the same experience in my surgery. GPs are very expensive. The deal about q0 years ago gave them too much money for too little work.
The services have been broken down in out practice into cheaper more specialist teams who dare I say are often have a better bedside manner and better outcomes than some of the GPs.

A sad situation, OP, but if GPS are indeed earning £100k for working 9-5, then clearly it's understandable that the NHS prefers to appoint more nurse practitioners etc, who can take a lot of the workload (not saying it's right though) at a much lower cost. I can't believe you wouldn't find work in private practice though as that sector is growing all the time.

@Portakalkedi no GP works 9-5. Some do earn £100k , but they will be working 60+ hours per week. I’m winding down to retirement so I only work 35 hours a week, and I earn £48.

@zazazooms how much do you think a GP earns per hour?

Sadly I do think some of this at least is down to patients. Before Google, we made a lot of uneducated assumption "I've got a fever, I'll go to bed for the weekend". (Now of course it would have cost many people their lives) But on the flip side: we all Google everything. We're all pretty much obsessed with the minute details of what our bodies are doing.

Things we go to the GP for that once wouldn't have been considered:

• birth control

-heavy periods -Menopause symptoms -fatigue -depression -Anxiety -Eating disorders -ADHD/autism diagnosis seeking -common childhood coughs and colds

There's many more .

It's not a bad thing at all that we now attend with these above complaints. However, it will naturally add considerable to numbers attending.

Not to mention new initiatives such as screening and MOTs /health check ups and chronic disease tick box reviews. They're all great ideas but there's no resources, so they end up pointless tick box exercises carried out by a HCA. There's no care in it or genuine check up on your symptoms. Just bp and weight and off you pop

Whole system is broken to be honest.

Around £50 per hour which is about double aparamedic (understandably so for the training, but not necessarily for patient outcomes or experience for many conditions or end of life stuff)

Is there any locum work as an interim solution?

Yes, my son’s really bright and easily has grades for medicine. He wanted to do it for ages but I’m glad he went off it. A lot of slog for a long time for not much reward as far as I can see.

Woah little bit scary reading this.

It's ridiculous. The whole state of the NHS is.

Well this thread is rather concerning!

@WutheringBites my local private GP practice does really well, I'd try getting a job in one of those if you can.

You can’t past the receptionist either?

Well I suspected my gp practice have all been replaced by AI which is programmed to send a random text instead of interacting.
the choice is

1. Ask the pharmacy
2. No appointments until 2037
3. Try canistan cream
4. Use the online app which has been down for the last 6 weeks
5. Book with the nurse who also has no appointments
6. We have sent your urgent prescription to the pharmacy. It will be ready for you to pick up in 28 days if you're lucky, but we have sent it via Mars.
7. Really? You have chest pain and 111 told you to get an urgent appointment? We haven't any. Try tomorrow when we also won't have any.
8. I'm scared of children/blood/feet so don't ask me
9. Great news! You have an appointment by phone. We will phone you.... On no, sorry it's been cancelled.

10. Stop bothering us. Anyone would think you expect us to do something about illness or something.

The good news is when you get a job you can sit on a beach in the South of France and send these out too, and no one will be able to tell.

Of course you're not being unreasonable. The NHS is deliberately replacing drs with none drs for their own dubious reasons. I know a few drs who have had to move to Australia or New Zealand in order to get a job, obviously that isn't possible for everyone as some have family commitments here but they are a lot happier now. It sounds like the healthcare systems over there are not (yet?) as broken as ours.

It’s not quite double, I’m a Paramedic seconded into GP and we get £35 an hour, plus time and half for any end of shift work - i.e. all the referrals and debriefing that occurs at the end of the shift.

Considering I only have to see about 23 patients through the day and don’t need to do all the pathlinks/results stuff, then if you factor in all the unnecessary tests/admissions I’m more likely to order - I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re more expensive than the GP. That’s before you consider that my clinical knowledge barely compares to that of the GP. Roughly speaking I would suggest I’m to the GP what the fist aider is to me.