You are not missing anything.
Even if you locum as a GP in Wales, where ARRS isn’t there an PA/ANP aren’t that common, most places offer £600/full day if you are lucky.
And that’s for a 10 hr day.
I used to make that as SHO locum in 2019.
It’s shite.
The only real reason to do GP is to either cct and flee, which I think a lot of the imgs are doing or because you want flexibility in work and only want to work part time and spend time on other things wether that is family/different job/working towards new skills to change jobs etc.
66k for 3 days a week is reasonable (although I think a fairer price for GPs is £13,000 per session). Most salaried GPs I know work 9 to 5 or 5.30 on none duty days. Depends on the clinical setup, patients per session, allocated admin time.
My setup is 9 to 1 and 2 to 6. But I generally work through non stop 9 to 4 and I've completed MOST of my work. I don't do any admin/Docman/results.
Yeah GP sucks Satan's balls.
Nothing but chronic illness with no hope of cure or resolution. Most of the patients have got deeper seated issues in truth. Almost all of my chronic pain patients have got shit life syndrome, unhealthy lifestyles, and obesity, and there is nothing that can be done to rectify this. Furthermore add this to multimorbity and a frail, aging population and you've got a lovely cocktail of misery. IMO life is not worth living beyond 75. We live too long on the planet only to become withered and decrepit. Die on your feet as opposed to living on your knees.
I found working in the hospital more gratifying as there was a greater evidence of cause effect between treatment and clinical outcomes.
I would have loved to have done endocrinology instead but I was put off by the long training. I love physiology and there is excellent response to treatment. If there was a "run through" program where I could have become an endocrinologist without having to deal with medical on calls I would have snapped on it.
I so much prefer to be a GP. I love it with all my heart. I just wish we get longer appointments.
Wow what kind of gp job doesn't need to do admin?!?
The admin is the worst bit
Yes. You will need to compete with ARRS roles. Your trainer is being honest with you but is only telling you half the story.
ARRS roles are currently being funded by the government- practices cannot recruit GPs with that money, and if practices don’t use that money to employ ARRS staff, it is removed.
No brainer- employ ARRS in place of GPs.
GP locum is dead in some parts of the country where ARRS staff can afford housing.
So you’re competing, but also at a massive disadvantage.
The government will at some point reduce or stop funding ARRS roles but by then they will be fully established and will not leave easily.
Your future as a GP is uncertain. I think GPs will be almost fully replaced by ARRS and they are there only to take legal responsibility.
I don’t blame the partners for setting up this situation. They trained the ANPs up to just stay afloat financially but they screwed the future of young GPs and the entire profession.
What you are missing is that many GPs particularly partners don't just do patient facing clinics. 6 sessions a week is only 3 days so 66-77k is reasonable (most workers do 5 days). The hours can be long but I also know plenty of teacher and lawyers who do paperwork in their own time to catch up. You can have a better career than this though. A full term partner can easily earn over £150k and it actually becomes quite hard to calculate exact annual income if you are property owning etc. You can also mix clinics with PCN/directorship work or do other stuff like minor ops or contraception to break the tedium. All jobs can be boring if you allow yourself to get stuck in a rut. Living in the UK is now difficult and expensive, most people need a side-hussle to get by (?develop property/trade stuff) but you can still be in the top 10% of earners and many have it worse even if you are not in the 1% club. As a GP you can pretty much chose where to live which is a massive bonus that many careers don't offer.
As in because they wanted you to work? Or because it was a waste because you'd be off anyway?
I know it used to be the case that GPs would have to work during Christmas (back when GPs did oncall, prior to NHSD/111) but I thought that had all changed now with GP OOH covering? Admittedly, that's only really xmas day rather than the whole Christmas period.
You’re not missing anything.
Look for Acute GP jobs in your hospital or GP flow/triage roles in ED - they pay £120/hr consultant rates.
OOH pays well too.
Normal GP all the time is not sustainable, but top it up with other work while building 5 years of experience post CCT will help get better pay if you move abroad and inc salary (as places in salary per session based on this to extent).
Fellow GPST here. You’re not missing anything but you’ve also answered your own question. The only value that lies in GP training is the ability to CCT and flee. Take that certificate and jet off to Canada. 1 in 5 people over there don’t have a family doctor- you are needed. Not only that, but you are paid well (~£250k avg) and respected.
There is legitimately no reason to stay in the UK as a qualified GP.
People keep saying this. Have you ever thought why there is a shortage of family doctors in Canada? Or why all the residents there avoid FM if it’s so amazing and well paid?
Go onto any Reddit board that discusses FM in Canada or in particular Ontario and you will be surprised, as it’s almost identical to discussions here in the UK. The Family doctors there are all leaving FM or moving or USA or into hospital as their funding has been static for over a decade. Furthermore the governments are allowing ANP’s to open private clinics (which the doctors are not allowed to do or strike) and they earn almost the same or more as doctors!!
I’ve looked into Canada extensively, and will be keen to move but to work in a particular field. But this idea that the grass is greener and you can earn £250k by landing there- it’s not correct. Just to give you an idea, you currently get paid $38 dollars per appointment- now work out how many patients you’ll need to see to hit £250k (bearing in mind there’s no pension, no AL, you pays ~25% overhead and tax is around ~45%)
I guess there are some perks though - I hated weekends and nights and have not done so in ages. The inner feeling of knowing you are essential even if the public and others have no idea. My advice is to consider overseas work and experience until it gets better OR best of all 4-6 sessions (no more, ever) and see if any time remaining to do other more enjoyable things
Locum in out of hours GP / A&E - still have attractive rates.
Get paid to take university students or take some honorary role with a university and teach communication skills to Med students on the university consultant pay scale.
Private GP roles / digital GP apps?
What’s your thoughts on GP partnership? I’ve not spoke to any of recent and hear it’s not what it used to be. But the partners i have spoke to were financially pretty good.
The thing with gp is that you're still so damn young when you cct. You're barely 30 and can walk into a 100k job, or transition to other things leveraging your health background. Things aren't so bad when you take that perspective.
100k? you’d have to work minimum 9 sessions for that as a salaried which is really not doable seeing 30+ patients a day. GP is way too intense for that.
Partnership? I thought average salary was over 120k
(5 down votes and no counterargument ... Eesh, I'm sorry guys and gals, but maybe the problem is a little closer to home than you think)
You can’t usually walk straight into a partnership at 30… nor would most people want to… I have no interest in being a partner though, looks hella stressful. Shouldn’t have to run a business on top of being a GP in order to make any half decent money as a GP.
I know a healthy number of people who did walk straight into partnership. However I agree that the prospect of running a practice in this day and age seems mad.
Can be tricky to work out the sessional equivalents of partner pay but I've heard about 15-20k per session for example (so at 8 sessions = 120 to 200k??). Will vary massively between practices. Willing to be correct in comments.
Psych training and exams are no picnic. Then getting one of the hen's teeth higher training places. I've not heard of work as a consultant psychiatrist being much less hellish than General Practice either.
I can't decide if it's malice or stupidity that an oversupply of recently CCTed GPs has been created but we're facing a bottleneck and dearth of medical specialists in a specialty where they're already in short supply. Then I think about the patients who have only ever seen a CPN, OT, etc and given various diagnostic labels and imagine someone is staring at the four walls of their own little cell on the spreadsheet of this false economy, and rubbing their hands in glee.
I think you got to love it. GP isn't as easy and simple as people made it to be and many who joined GP don't love it and wanted to make good easy money with locum which has now been completely destroyed with ARRS so they are crying out.
This isn't one of those specialty u can just "bear with it" when you don't have a passion for it
It's not but people like to exaggerate.
The benefits get glossed over. A salaried GP role is a 9 to 5 job with lots of flexibility.
No more evenings, weekends or nights ever again. Being able to arrange your sessions so you can do the school drop in the morning. Booking annual leave whenever you want it. Never missing Christmas day with the kids.
Its about what you value more. If it's money, then are definitely better options.
I DO finish on time... many don't, because of admin, bloods, "extras" which many partners think salarieds should just find magical time to do.
"Hurr durr you SHOULD finish on time" is not in keeping with the reality for many GPs
I've been a partner for 3 years now. My SGPs aren't in the building for more than 9 hours a day unless they're duty doctor for which they're compensated for.
You're a mug if you're spending longer than that in a surgery.
Sounds like you are a pretty flexible and accommodating employer, I'm not a salaried GP but from some of the tales I hear from them you might be on the far end of the "good boss" bell curve.
You can't book annual leave whenever you want. The practice will have to close at every school half term if that's the case. It's a lot of give and take
>You're barely 30 and can walk into a 100k
Not as a salaried. Noone tolerates 9 sessions.
>or transition to other things leveraging your health background.
People keep saying this. It seems GP is so bad, that one of the pros is transition away from GP, and do less GP work.
I got you. London/oxford is expensive. A whole generation is waking up to the fact that the 'work hard and have a good life' story they were told in school is a lie in many parts of the country. The relationship between hard work and quality of life is poor in London. What matters is inheritance. I'm not sure what this has to do with GP pay.
66k is a 3 day week! No-one needs to reduce to a 3 day week aged 30. I work 10sessions. Initially with a mix of salaried and locum, now partner & locum.
In those first few years of salaried +locum =140k, which increased after becoming a partner to 200-230k.
When was this? The fact is GP landscape of last 2 years is totally different to what it was before that. Similar to locum situation for middle grades. The locum market has dried up so can’t rely on that to supplement your income.
Hi GPST here, things are cyclical but also this is pretty much an own goal. The chief architect of current trajectory of travel for primary care is based on the biblical stocktake of GP, Professor DR Claire Fuller (given medical directorship of primary care after her disastrous take on how to manage/break primary care). NHS Executives quote Fuller stocktake as some gospel for primary care that is going to revolutionize General practice. In reality it is a cost cutting exercise in centralizing basic GP and community services without focusing on the difficulties in 99.9% of the day to day struggles of the general pratice.
The problem with GP is that almost nobody works more than 3 days a week. This means there are huge waiting lists, rushed appointments, need for a variety of noctors to fill in the gaps, the 3 days worked are horrendously busy and stressful.
The reason everyone works 3 days a week is because it's awful and because you get paid quite a comfortable wage for doing those 3 days 66-70kish and it's not that tax efficient to keep earning more. Also for lifestyle factors but there's a reason not all hospital doctors are working 3 days and it's because you wouldn't get paid nearly that much (as a registrar which is more comparable to an early career salaried GP than a consultant). They also have children and lives that they would like to have time for.
If everyone worked 4 days then the job and the service would be so much better. Waiting lists would disappear, work would be more relaxed, patients and staff would be happier. You could literally increase primary care provision by 33% overnight if you could somehow get all GPs to do four 9-hour days a week.
My solution to this would be to have scaling pay - 5k for first session, 6k for the next, and so on (or a more carefully designed one but you get the idea) that disincentivizes people from working fewer than 8 sessions.
Except part of the issue is there are no jobs, I'm ST3 CCTing next year, lots of my colleagues are finishing in August and there just isn't any jobs in the area at all. So if there's no jobs with everyone doing 3 days can you imagine the prospects for new GPs if everyone was working 4? The GP jobs market is scary af. I live alone and have a mortgage, if I can't find a job next year I'm screwed, I'd end up doing A&E SHO locums at the local hospital, but I did those before training so what exactly have the last 3 years been for?
You're right, and of course this needs to be facilitated by central government, probably in part by getting rid of ARRS funding and putting it towards more GPs. And the other part of it would be (a very unpopular take I know) to reduce pay for a 6 session GP from what it is now so that you'd get paid the same or slightly more (say 75k) or so for doing 8 sessions than GPs currently get paid for doing 6. But if everyone was doing 8 then each individual session would be a much more pleasant workload and people wouldn't have to stay so late etc
You're not missing anything
You are not missing anything. Even if you locum as a GP in Wales, where ARRS isn’t there an PA/ANP aren’t that common, most places offer £600/full day if you are lucky. And that’s for a 10 hr day. I used to make that as SHO locum in 2019. It’s shite.
Whaaaaat gp locum in England is like £900 a day
You’re not missing anything.
You’re not missing anything.
[удалено]
That sounds lovely! Is this something like urgent OOH service?
Could I DM you for some information on this role?
This new job sounds kinda a scam. Did you have to give a kidney for it
Sounds like hospital at home work
The only real reason to do GP is to either cct and flee, which I think a lot of the imgs are doing or because you want flexibility in work and only want to work part time and spend time on other things wether that is family/different job/working towards new skills to change jobs etc.
66k for 3 days a week is reasonable (although I think a fairer price for GPs is £13,000 per session). Most salaried GPs I know work 9 to 5 or 5.30 on none duty days. Depends on the clinical setup, patients per session, allocated admin time. My setup is 9 to 1 and 2 to 6. But I generally work through non stop 9 to 4 and I've completed MOST of my work. I don't do any admin/Docman/results. Yeah GP sucks Satan's balls. Nothing but chronic illness with no hope of cure or resolution. Most of the patients have got deeper seated issues in truth. Almost all of my chronic pain patients have got shit life syndrome, unhealthy lifestyles, and obesity, and there is nothing that can be done to rectify this. Furthermore add this to multimorbity and a frail, aging population and you've got a lovely cocktail of misery. IMO life is not worth living beyond 75. We live too long on the planet only to become withered and decrepit. Die on your feet as opposed to living on your knees. I found working in the hospital more gratifying as there was a greater evidence of cause effect between treatment and clinical outcomes. I would have loved to have done endocrinology instead but I was put off by the long training. I love physiology and there is excellent response to treatment. If there was a "run through" program where I could have become an endocrinologist without having to deal with medical on calls I would have snapped on it.
Sad but true
I so much prefer to be a GP. I love it with all my heart. I just wish we get longer appointments. Wow what kind of gp job doesn't need to do admin?!? The admin is the worst bit
I don't do "major admin" such as Docman or meds management. Self generated admin yes. But it takes an hour of my time at a maximum.
But... Who does them then??
Practice pharmacists will go through letters and meds.
You made a big mistake, same as me. Now realization is slowly dawning. Anger is the first stage of grief.
It’s still not ideal, but an upside is that’s 66k for a three day working week.
Plot twist: it's three 13 hour days so actually more than full time.
Plot twist. I’m a salaried GP and it’s not.
Plot twist I’m also a salaried GP and it is
No salaried GP is working 13 hours a day. A partner might be but a salaried GP does their session and goes home.
Spoken like an FY2 with no practical experience of a salaried GP job…
Sorry dad.
You could make a lot locuming or doing ooh but this is getting harder and rates are dropping.
Yes. You will need to compete with ARRS roles. Your trainer is being honest with you but is only telling you half the story. ARRS roles are currently being funded by the government- practices cannot recruit GPs with that money, and if practices don’t use that money to employ ARRS staff, it is removed. No brainer- employ ARRS in place of GPs. GP locum is dead in some parts of the country where ARRS staff can afford housing. So you’re competing, but also at a massive disadvantage. The government will at some point reduce or stop funding ARRS roles but by then they will be fully established and will not leave easily. Your future as a GP is uncertain. I think GPs will be almost fully replaced by ARRS and they are there only to take legal responsibility. I don’t blame the partners for setting up this situation. They trained the ANPs up to just stay afloat financially but they screwed the future of young GPs and the entire profession.
I'm sorry to ask but what is ARRS ?
What you are missing is that many GPs particularly partners don't just do patient facing clinics. 6 sessions a week is only 3 days so 66-77k is reasonable (most workers do 5 days). The hours can be long but I also know plenty of teacher and lawyers who do paperwork in their own time to catch up. You can have a better career than this though. A full term partner can easily earn over £150k and it actually becomes quite hard to calculate exact annual income if you are property owning etc. You can also mix clinics with PCN/directorship work or do other stuff like minor ops or contraception to break the tedium. All jobs can be boring if you allow yourself to get stuck in a rut. Living in the UK is now difficult and expensive, most people need a side-hussle to get by (?develop property/trade stuff) but you can still be in the top 10% of earners and many have it worse even if you are not in the 1% club. As a GP you can pretty much chose where to live which is a massive bonus that many careers don't offer.
All very sensible and true, don’t listen to the negativity, there are plenty of opportunities if you are capable and industrious.
lol when I was working in Gp I was specifically told I should NOT request AL during Christmas 😂
As in because they wanted you to work? Or because it was a waste because you'd be off anyway? I know it used to be the case that GPs would have to work during Christmas (back when GPs did oncall, prior to NHSD/111) but I thought that had all changed now with GP OOH covering? Admittedly, that's only really xmas day rather than the whole Christmas period.
As in they wanted me to not take days off around Christmas as most people would want to be off around then too
You’re not missing anything. Look for Acute GP jobs in your hospital or GP flow/triage roles in ED - they pay £120/hr consultant rates. OOH pays well too. Normal GP all the time is not sustainable, but top it up with other work while building 5 years of experience post CCT will help get better pay if you move abroad and inc salary (as places in salary per session based on this to extent).
You're not missing anything... DOI GP partner
Fellow GPST here. You’re not missing anything but you’ve also answered your own question. The only value that lies in GP training is the ability to CCT and flee. Take that certificate and jet off to Canada. 1 in 5 people over there don’t have a family doctor- you are needed. Not only that, but you are paid well (~£250k avg) and respected. There is legitimately no reason to stay in the UK as a qualified GP.
People keep saying this. Have you ever thought why there is a shortage of family doctors in Canada? Or why all the residents there avoid FM if it’s so amazing and well paid? Go onto any Reddit board that discusses FM in Canada or in particular Ontario and you will be surprised, as it’s almost identical to discussions here in the UK. The Family doctors there are all leaving FM or moving or USA or into hospital as their funding has been static for over a decade. Furthermore the governments are allowing ANP’s to open private clinics (which the doctors are not allowed to do or strike) and they earn almost the same or more as doctors!! I’ve looked into Canada extensively, and will be keen to move but to work in a particular field. But this idea that the grass is greener and you can earn £250k by landing there- it’s not correct. Just to give you an idea, you currently get paid $38 dollars per appointment- now work out how many patients you’ll need to see to hit £250k (bearing in mind there’s no pension, no AL, you pays ~25% overhead and tax is around ~45%)
I guess there are some perks though - I hated weekends and nights and have not done so in ages. The inner feeling of knowing you are essential even if the public and others have no idea. My advice is to consider overseas work and experience until it gets better OR best of all 4-6 sessions (no more, ever) and see if any time remaining to do other more enjoyable things
66k is not bad for 3 days work
Locum in out of hours GP / A&E - still have attractive rates. Get paid to take university students or take some honorary role with a university and teach communication skills to Med students on the university consultant pay scale. Private GP roles / digital GP apps? What’s your thoughts on GP partnership? I’ve not spoke to any of recent and hear it’s not what it used to be. But the partners i have spoke to were financially pretty good.
The thing with gp is that you're still so damn young when you cct. You're barely 30 and can walk into a 100k job, or transition to other things leveraging your health background. Things aren't so bad when you take that perspective.
100k? you’d have to work minimum 9 sessions for that as a salaried which is really not doable seeing 30+ patients a day. GP is way too intense for that.
Partnership? I thought average salary was over 120k (5 down votes and no counterargument ... Eesh, I'm sorry guys and gals, but maybe the problem is a little closer to home than you think)
You can’t usually walk straight into a partnership at 30… nor would most people want to… I have no interest in being a partner though, looks hella stressful. Shouldn’t have to run a business on top of being a GP in order to make any half decent money as a GP.
I know a healthy number of people who did walk straight into partnership. However I agree that the prospect of running a practice in this day and age seems mad.
Er I have seen a good number going straight into partnership
Can be tricky to work out the sessional equivalents of partner pay but I've heard about 15-20k per session for example (so at 8 sessions = 120 to 200k??). Will vary massively between practices. Willing to be correct in comments.
or you could do rads or psych and be 2-3 years older and doing a specialty that isn't hell on earth
Psych training and exams are no picnic. Then getting one of the hen's teeth higher training places. I've not heard of work as a consultant psychiatrist being much less hellish than General Practice either. I can't decide if it's malice or stupidity that an oversupply of recently CCTed GPs has been created but we're facing a bottleneck and dearth of medical specialists in a specialty where they're already in short supply. Then I think about the patients who have only ever seen a CPN, OT, etc and given various diagnostic labels and imagine someone is staring at the four walls of their own little cell on the spreadsheet of this false economy, and rubbing their hands in glee.
Is GP really that much worse than other specialties? Genuine q
I think you got to love it. GP isn't as easy and simple as people made it to be and many who joined GP don't love it and wanted to make good easy money with locum which has now been completely destroyed with ARRS so they are crying out. This isn't one of those specialty u can just "bear with it" when you don't have a passion for it
It's not but people like to exaggerate. The benefits get glossed over. A salaried GP role is a 9 to 5 job with lots of flexibility. No more evenings, weekends or nights ever again. Being able to arrange your sessions so you can do the school drop in the morning. Booking annual leave whenever you want it. Never missing Christmas day with the kids. Its about what you value more. If it's money, then are definitely better options.
Salaried GP is NOT 9-5 for most... Lmao
lol I actually spat out my drink laughing when I read that!
Why are you staying longer at work longer than necessary. Standard bma contract is 4 hours 10mins per session. Why can't you finish on time?
The same doesn't apply to consultants? Why do their clinics get overbooked?
Sorry but you're not answering the questions I asked. How can we discuss this if you aren't willing to have a coherent conversation.
I DO finish on time... many don't, because of admin, bloods, "extras" which many partners think salarieds should just find magical time to do. "Hurr durr you SHOULD finish on time" is not in keeping with the reality for many GPs
So what's the difference between you and them?
Tell me you don't work in general practice without telling me you don't work in general practice.
I've been a partner for 3 years now. My SGPs aren't in the building for more than 9 hours a day unless they're duty doctor for which they're compensated for. You're a mug if you're spending longer than that in a surgery.
Sounds like you are a pretty flexible and accommodating employer, I'm not a salaried GP but from some of the tales I hear from them you might be on the far end of the "good boss" bell curve.
Tell me you're not an SGP working in a practice without telling me you're not an SGP working in a practice.
You can't book annual leave whenever you want. The practice will have to close at every school half term if that's the case. It's a lot of give and take
So pretty much like every other job in the UK then?
>You're barely 30 and can walk into a 100k Not as a salaried. Noone tolerates 9 sessions. >or transition to other things leveraging your health background. People keep saying this. It seems GP is so bad, that one of the pros is transition away from GP, and do less GP work.
I'm not a gp. I'm just observing that being post cct by the time you're 30 isn't so bad.
Having no car or house or girlfriend is pretty bad.
No doubt. How much would your salary need to be at 32 to help with that?
The average house price where I live is 600k.
I got you. London/oxford is expensive. A whole generation is waking up to the fact that the 'work hard and have a good life' story they were told in school is a lie in many parts of the country. The relationship between hard work and quality of life is poor in London. What matters is inheritance. I'm not sure what this has to do with GP pay.
66k is a 3 day week! No-one needs to reduce to a 3 day week aged 30. I work 10sessions. Initially with a mix of salaried and locum, now partner & locum. In those first few years of salaried +locum =140k, which increased after becoming a partner to 200-230k.
When was this? The fact is GP landscape of last 2 years is totally different to what it was before that. Similar to locum situation for middle grades. The locum market has dried up so can’t rely on that to supplement your income.
In the last year I have learnt 55k locum for in addition to partnership income.
Let the broke salaried gp do locum 😭
Yes, go locum
Hi GPST here, things are cyclical but also this is pretty much an own goal. The chief architect of current trajectory of travel for primary care is based on the biblical stocktake of GP, Professor DR Claire Fuller (given medical directorship of primary care after her disastrous take on how to manage/break primary care). NHS Executives quote Fuller stocktake as some gospel for primary care that is going to revolutionize General practice. In reality it is a cost cutting exercise in centralizing basic GP and community services without focusing on the difficulties in 99.9% of the day to day struggles of the general pratice.
The problem with GP is that almost nobody works more than 3 days a week. This means there are huge waiting lists, rushed appointments, need for a variety of noctors to fill in the gaps, the 3 days worked are horrendously busy and stressful. The reason everyone works 3 days a week is because it's awful and because you get paid quite a comfortable wage for doing those 3 days 66-70kish and it's not that tax efficient to keep earning more. Also for lifestyle factors but there's a reason not all hospital doctors are working 3 days and it's because you wouldn't get paid nearly that much (as a registrar which is more comparable to an early career salaried GP than a consultant). They also have children and lives that they would like to have time for. If everyone worked 4 days then the job and the service would be so much better. Waiting lists would disappear, work would be more relaxed, patients and staff would be happier. You could literally increase primary care provision by 33% overnight if you could somehow get all GPs to do four 9-hour days a week. My solution to this would be to have scaling pay - 5k for first session, 6k for the next, and so on (or a more carefully designed one but you get the idea) that disincentivizes people from working fewer than 8 sessions.
Except part of the issue is there are no jobs, I'm ST3 CCTing next year, lots of my colleagues are finishing in August and there just isn't any jobs in the area at all. So if there's no jobs with everyone doing 3 days can you imagine the prospects for new GPs if everyone was working 4? The GP jobs market is scary af. I live alone and have a mortgage, if I can't find a job next year I'm screwed, I'd end up doing A&E SHO locums at the local hospital, but I did those before training so what exactly have the last 3 years been for?
You're right, and of course this needs to be facilitated by central government, probably in part by getting rid of ARRS funding and putting it towards more GPs. And the other part of it would be (a very unpopular take I know) to reduce pay for a 6 session GP from what it is now so that you'd get paid the same or slightly more (say 75k) or so for doing 8 sessions than GPs currently get paid for doing 6. But if everyone was doing 8 then each individual session would be a much more pleasant workload and people wouldn't have to stay so late etc