NHS gives male doctors more bonuses... because they ask

MaLE senior doctors are more likely to get bonuses than their female colleagues because they ask for them, it is claimed.

More than 52 per cent of 43,856 NHS hospital consultants in England received a merit-based award in 2015, ranging between £17,000 and £77,000, a report found. of those receiving one for the first time, just 65 were women while 252 were men.

But a report by the advisory committee on clinical Excellence awards found that women who applied for bonuses were just as likely to be successful as men – both male and female consultants had a 26 per cent success rate. clare Marx, president of the royal college of Surgeons, believes this shows that fewer women are receiving bonuses because they are less inclined to ask for them.

She told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘We find that women are unlikely to put themselves forward unless they feel they can tick all the boxes – whereas by and large men are more likely to just give it a whirl.

Women on the whole tend to be quite time-poor, so when they think they will not get awards, they are reluctant to try. The issue that concerns us is that they are less likely to be even encouraged to try.’ It comes in the wake of the row over the gender pay gap at the BBc.