From Sky News:
Sarah Wollaston, a Tory MP and GP, called it a "a load of (mcIn)'tosh!".Well, it isn't tosh. The facts are the facts here. It might be inconvenient that it's been raised, or it might offend your feminist perspective or make you feel personally wounded, but neither of the opponents are disagreeing with the figures quoted that women GPs work part time for a quarter of their careers.
"Women doctors add great value in medicine and job sharers often contribute more than Whole Time Equivalent," she said.
And what's the effect of that? 70% of all GPs training are women, 50% of the work, 25% of the time? That's what, 8% of GP capacity lost? Anyone want to say that people shouldn't be worrying about that level of loss of capacity in the system
11 comments:
I didn't realise that she splits her time between doing a "work share" in a surgey and being an MP. She does, doesn't she?
Any road up, on her blog, accessible via her MP website, or direct (http://www.drsarah.org.uk/sarah%27s-blog/) the good Doctor said on 23rd May:-
The pressure on GPs has never been greater and yet there is a shortfall in those able to deliver the service, especially in inner cities and rural outposts. Over the coming five years we expect a retirement bulge from male full-time GPs which will not be plugged by an increasingly female workforce more likely to be working part-time to balance family commitments. That is not a criticism, merely a statement of fact.
So the "loss of capacity" she is denying in one place, she admits is going to get worse on another?
No, actually it's not a really big issue.
Some people prefer women GPs so it all evens out, and her point about two part timers sharing might (or might not) make sense.
The "waste" such as is is paying for expensive training people for a job which they don't do full time all their lives, but unless more men apply to become GPs then you've got to play the hand you're dealt.
The real waste is the fact that GPs are paid so much money, if you ask me.
GP's are overpaid - end of. I met the bloke who negotiated their deal with the Blair regime. He told me that he couldn't believe the deal they were offered right at the beginning of the negotiation and told the BMA (he was their chief negotiator) to not argue and just bite the arm of then the health secretary.
What they need is a dose of free market economics and a 'price signal'. Properly privatise all the buggers and make them compete for patients. I think MW's voucher system would work here, if you insist that health is a merit good and should be part financed by transfer payments.
L, yes, obviously.
But however they are paid, if they are paid for 'work" done (prescribing pain killers or antibiotics; telling the patient not to worry; referring to a specialist; completely overlooking serious conditions; and asking stupid questions about drinking habits) then as long as they are not being paid for those 8% of hours which TS calculates they are not "working", well what's the problem?
"more likely to be working part-time to balance family commitments."
That's what she should be getting het up about if she's a feminist: that it's the women who have to give up their working time to look after the children, not the men.
So you stop women working part-time in medicine and what's the result? Even fewer medics.
@L According to conventional
Economics, if Blair had overpaid GP's ,there'd be an oversupply of doctors now.
Mark,
But however they are paid, if they are paid for 'work" done (prescribing pain killers or antibiotics; telling the patient not to worry; referring to a specialist; completely overlooking serious conditions; and asking stupid questions about drinking habits) then as long as they are not being paid for those 8% of hours which TS calculates they are not "working", well what's the problem?
The problem is loss of capacity. We have limited capacity for training up GPs.
If this were free market, pay for your own training with lots of ways into being a GP (like there is with software developers), it wouldn't matter.
And some women might want a female GP, but you still then have less capacity. The men who might be happy with a woman GP (like me), now don't have a GP.
DBC,
Not if you have a single route to being a GP with limited capacity for training. Medicine, unlike say, software development, isn't a free market in labour.
TS: that and there's a lot that GPs do that nurses could do. If you outsource the chit-chat and things that could be resolved by software assistance (both more appropriate for nurses), there are probably enough GPs, woman or men. UK GP visits last 5 minutes on average, in which time nothing serious can be resolved.
Kj,
Don't get me started. I outdiagnosed 3 GPs, a locum and an ENT with Google. It is crazy that with all the medical diagnostic results that none of these people have any database of prior diagnostics organised into keywords and based on symptoms.
My experience as well. But depending on medical establishment opposition (a big if), these things are going to change by themselves anyway by retail clinics. Not long before it's worth the cost of a charge for resolving something quickly, as opposed to free GPs that don't really do anything.
TS, Me, too. The last time I needed to see the doctor, I had already diagnosed what was wrong with me using Google, Wikipedia and my memory. This I was able to tell the doctor I saw, once it was obvious he was completely baffled by my symptoms.
Kj, on that occasion, it only took a real doctor (not the impostor I saw initially) about 30 seconds to confirm my diagnosis. The other four and a half minutes could be spent writing out a prescription and job done.
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