Junior doctors are quitting our crumbling NHS
New medics bailing out for better pay and conditions in the world of finance
THE new leader of the Scottish doctors’ national body revealed yesterday that junior medics are quitting for better paid jobs in finance.
Dr Iain Kennedy, who took over as chair of British Medical Association Scotland earlier this month, said clinicians are more worried than ever about a looming winter crisis.
He said junior doctors, who earn about £27,500 a year, are quitting medicine within two years of completing training to take up jobs in the finance sector.
And he warned that general practice, in particular, is “in a very precarious position”.
The GP, from Inverness, said the public is unaware how serious the situation is – with doctors’ surgeries collapsing and a “dwindling” pool of practitioners.
Dr Kennedy said his own group of four GP practices has lost medics to South Africa and New Zealand, with more on the verge of retirement, but can’t find replacements.
He said: “We’ve just come out of summer and our hospitals are full. Our A&Es have huge waiting times and waiting times in outpatients are massive across just about every speciality.
“The NHS is crumbling and patients are being failed.
“Doctors are beginning to wonder if this is the sort of service they want to work in.
“We already have practices collapsing, particularly in my own area in the Highlands.
“Practices are fighting over the same, ever-dwindling pool of doctors, so we’re seeing a lot of salaried GPs moving around different practices as they get poached.
“It’s a really grim situation and I don’t think the public is aware how bad it is.
“There are many practices in the north-west coast of Scotland that have no GPs.
“The biggest practice in the Highlands – in Alness and Invergordon – is run by locums.
“When I started my training in the late 90s there were 10 GP partners there.” Dr Kennedy will chair a meeting of BMA Scotland representatives on October 6 and potential industrial action will be on the agenda. A consultation has already indicated eight in 10 medics in Scotland support taking some form of action to protest against the 4.5 per cent pay award. But it would be up to each individual branch – representing junior doctors, consultants, GPs and specialists – whether to ballot their members.
Dr Kennedy said there was a “groundswell” of opinion looking for action on pay after more than a decade of sub-inflation salary hikes.
It come against a backdrop of spiralling NHS workloads and the unresolved issues of huge pension tax bills which are spurring senior clinicians to retire early.
Dr Kennedy added: “We haven’t been planning adequate workforce numbers to cope with changing demographics and patients are suffering.
“We need far more doctors, but we also need to stop them retiring. We’ve got to retain them before we recruit them – by sorting out pay, pensions and work conditions.”
The 4.5 per cent pay award, backdated to April 1, was accepted by the Scottish Government in July following the recommendation of the UK’s Doctors and Dentists Pay Review Body.
Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said it would mean Scotland’s senior medical staff “continue to be the best paid in the UK”, coming on top of a three per cent uplift last year.
I don’t think the public is aware how bad it is DR IAIN KENNEDY ON THE SCARCITY OF MEDICS