News

Future GPs 'would work for private firms'

06-Aug-08

More than half of future GPs would work for practices run by private providers, a GP snapshot poll has found.

An even higher proportion said that they would accept a job in a polyclinic.

‘It's not really why I wanted to become a GP,' one registrar interviewed at the BMA's ‘GPs-to-Be' conference in London last month said. ‘But in the current job climate I might have to.'

Dr Alex Smallwood, chairman of the BMA's GP trainees sub-committee, said the figures were a ‘bombshell.' ‘The private sector will get highly skilled people at the taxpayer's expense,' he said.

The survey found that 52 per cent of future GPs would work for a privately-run practice. Only 36 per cent would not consider it.

The results are a dramatic reversal from a survey conducted at the 2006 conference, where half of those surveyed said they would not work for private providers under any circumstance.

Most respondents said they would prefer to work in a traditional practice. But they fear the shortage of job opportunities will force them to explore other options.

Dr Beth McCarron-Nash, the youngest member of the GPC negotiating team, warned that practices' failure to provide opportunities for young GPs meant that APMS employers were becoming ‘very enticing'.

‘I think if you ask most doctors they fundamentally believe in list-based general practice and an NHS that's free at the point of access,' she said. ‘But that doesn't marry up with the job opportunities.'

jonn.elledge@haymarket.com

For the full story, see GP's 8 August edition.

Comment below and tell us what you think

Comments

vanda playford

06/08/2008

No surprise. Real General Practice will only survive if all GPs stick together and refuse the salaried GP system, so offering young GP's the opportunity to be part of a traditional practices as partners. Unless those GP's winging about private firms taking over reverse the salaried trend, then more and more young GP's will choose to be exploited by companies rather than by their colleagues. GP's in this blog are quick to blaime politicians but they are playing the same game - feathering their own nests at the expense of the entire system.

robert cann

07/08/2008

I qualified last year and it has been difficult to get a regular job let alone partnership. Most senior GPs are only interested in their huge annual profits and not willing to create opportunities for younger ones. At the same time they expect these same jobless and salaried GPs to help form a united front. sorry this cannot work. The bottom line is putting bread on the table of your family and if that means working for private entities then so be it. Unity can only come when the more privileged can help the less privileged. Until then I'm afraid the key word is survival. I can foresee the slow death of family general practice.

Mohammed Ayub

07/08/2008

As a GP in a partnership, I think we need to do more to encourage partnerships. There's a sea of new talent out there which will go to waste if we didn't offer partnerships.

Duncan Elder

08/08/2008

Medical Practices are probably the only profession that people expect to go in as partners, particularly without buying a share of the business. In other professions you go in as an employee and work your way in, usually after a number of years & only if you work hard enough to satisfy the existing partners that you are capable of bringing in the money. Yes medicine is a bit different, however I listen to young GPs expecting the earth when they are just out of training & wonder what planet they are on. I am a practice manager (former accountant) & not a partner.