Locum GPs – the skills we need and how to achieve them

We’re very pleased to announce the publication of our ‘core competencies’ document Locum GPs – the skills we need and how to achieve them. So, who should read it?

• Locum GPs
  • This paper celebrates the importance and skills of locum GPs. Reading it may make you feel better about the job you’re already doing and may even give you some ideas on how to further develop your hugely valuable role.
• Salaried GPs
  • Hats off to salaried GPs who take on significantly more practice responsibility than locums, yet have no where near the same level of control as partners. Reading this document may make you see locuming in a different light and give you more confidence to seriously consider it should your current post not be all it was cracked up to be.
• Partners
  • There’s a lot to locuming that our partner colleagues are often too busy to realise. As a partner reading this document, we hope you’ll gain even more insight into what’s involved in being a GP locum and hope you’ll be able to instigate changes to your practice that will enable locums to work safely and effectively to the full benefit of your patients and their skills.
• Registrars, AiTs, ST1/2/3 – you know who you are.
  • Er, incoming news, guys. You know all that stuff you’re being taught about general practice and being a partner and all? Well, the reality is that you’re very likely to be locuming for longer than you thought, and actually working as a locum can be pretty tough. Your interface with patients will be quite different too, and if you’re serious about being a good GP there’s a lot that this document can tell you about working as a GP locum. Even in the very unlikely event that you locum for just a few months, there’s no excuse not to be prepared.
• Leaders of Sessional GP Groups
  • You are the unsung heroes of general practice, providing a leadership role for GPs who otherwise may completely be without any support or structure to their professional lives. We hope this document will help you to distil what you already know about working as a GP locum and pass on to your group.
• GP tutors, trainers, course organisers etc
  • Just because it’s not on the curriculum, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Read this document. Make your own decision. 
• RCGP & BMA
  • 25% of all GPs work as locums, loads of us are  your members yet there has been very little investment by our profession in the development of anything to make a tangible difference to the daily lives of busy locums trying to provide excellent care to our patients. Please read this document, accept that your respective AiT committee and Sessional GP Committees both made excellent and supportive contributions to the document, endorse the document and work with NASGP to ensure that working as a GP locum becomes as palatable and as acceptable as working as a GP principal.

Motional Intelligence

One good way to get things done in the GP world is to have motions debated and hopefully adopted at the annual conference of LMCs in June every year, and the Monday 12th April deadline for LMC motions is swiftly approaching.  NASGP member Jessica Harris has suggested:

…people should lobby their LMC reps to get these motions put forward, … it would help if the same sort of ideas come form different regions of the country as then the agenda committee is more likely to put these items high enough on the agenda for them to be voted on…

Here are some of Jessica’s and our suggestions for you to get your LMC to submit:

1. Superannuation: Extension of deadline for locums to submit LocumA and LocumB forms.
2. Allow locums to pay superannuation contributions by direct debit or standing order.
3. Locum GPs regularly work across multiple PCTs, practices, consulting rooms, IT and clinical governance systems, often under circumstances which enforce underperformance beyond the locum GPs control. To deliver safe patient care locum GPs therefore need better tailored support which addresses their specific needs.
4. Locums need to be fully recognised in proposals for revalidation. Any requirements must recognise the realities of locum work and must be fully funded centrally.

If you have any other suggestions, please add them as ‘comments’ to this blog posting.

GPC Sessional GP Subcommittee survey

The GPC Sessional GP Subcommittee has asked the NASGP to ask our members about our views on representation. Rather than do a survey and collate the many replies, we’re instead asking our 1,300 members to give their opinions using the BMA’s questions online and then feed the entire ‘raw’ results back to the BMA. Saves us a bit of time too (closing date 22nd March!).

It’s a very short survey which you can access here.

GP locums exposed to NHS pension cost-cutting

We’ve received yet another email from a frustrated member:

I have just had my supperannuation cheque returned from [X] PCT as it is just over the 10 weeks, even though as pointed out to them i only got the paper work and cheque from the practice 1 week ago and the forms were dated so.

We wrote to the BMA 2 weeks ago (no reply yet) with this list of PCTs (as a result of our member survey) where locums have experienced problems submitting their payments where these PCTs have cited either the 10 week rule (locum form A) – or the 7 day rule (locum form B):

• Berkshire West
• West Sussex
• East Sussex
• Bury (Lancashire)
• Surrey
• Nottingham County
• Hampshire
• Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire
• Kingston
• Wandsworth
• Croydon
• Sutton & Merton

We don’t necessarily blame the PCTs – they’re arguably just ‘doing their job’ and we’d never expect them to look at this issue particularly creatively.

Either, legislation needs to be changed in order to give realistic periods of time for locums to be paid by practices. Or, PCTs must allow locums to pay their (average) contributions by direct debit and have just one annual deadline to submit paperwork (a system that works so smoothly in other sectors such as medical protection and Inland Revenue etc).