BMA committee say GPs should have the same career earnings as consultants...
Just seen this article on another SM platform, and the comments were interesting. Lots of likely hospital specialists saying GP training isn't long enough or the job is not comparable to consultants in terms of difficulty to be able to justify comparable pay. Some even suggested GP training should be 4/5 years or GP trainees should have to do IMT1&2 then MRCP before GP training.
I'm still in training, but I have a lot of newly CCT'd colleagues and it seems the biggest let down at the minute is pay and working conditions. I know colleagues saying that their sessions are more like 6 hours worth of work on 4 hours pay, and many starting on a measly £10k per session (some even only getting £9.5k on ARRS). Lots say 9 sessions just isn't viable with the workload, and if you count actual hours worked 6 sessions is probably more like full time, so this often creates a glass ceiling on pay.
I do personally think GP pay should be comparable, and should increase with experience, akin to the consultant payscale. I disagree with the arguement that we don't do enough years of training, because every secondary care speciality differs in that regard too and they all start on the first step of the consultant payscale regardless. I also think we need to reconfigure a session, and realise the job we are being asked to do doesn't fit into 4 hours 10 minutes anymore and this needs adjusting too. Maybe I'm naive as a trainee, but I do think something needs to change.
What are people's thoughts on this? Is this something you support? What issues could this bring? Genuinely interested.