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Latest posts

Pregnancy, discrimination and unfair dismissal

Posted on 10 January 2013 by BMA employment relations team

A salaried GP was told that a practice was opening nearby, and that it was likely to attract patients and income — more than £70,000 in the first year alone — away from her surgery.

Tags: general practitioners, discrimination, redundancy, pay
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A common sense approach to bank holidays

Posted on 18 December 2012 by BMA employment relations team

It sounds like a fairly basic maths question. A half-time doctor gets half the salary of their full-time equivalent. To calculate the annual leave, do you simply divide by two? Actually, it’s not quite that simple.

Tags: consultants, supporting professional activities, programmed activities
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Appraisal awareness pays

Posted on 27 November 2012 by BMA employment relations team

If doctors are to get the most out of their appraisals, it is vital they are given the means to prepare for and complete them.

Tags: appraisal, sessional GPs, pay, locums
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Appraisal compensation is your due

Posted on 22 October 2012 by BMA employment relations team

For locum GPs, funding responsibility in England clearly lies with PCTs.

Department of Health guidance (pdf) for England from 2004 refers to PCTs needing to agree ‘the precise details of payments to appraisers as well as those to locums in the case of their appraisee costs’.

Tags: appraisal, sessional GPs, revalidation, expenses and allowances
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Making previous experience pay for a consultant

Posted on 7 September 2012 by BMA employment relations team

A recently appointed consultant was told her previous experience would not count towards seniority in a new post. The problem, the trust said, was that her experience had come in the form of ‘various locum agency posts’. This was misleading. In fact, there were three postings, each lasting several months and based within NHS hospitals.

Tags: consultants, contracts, on-call work, locums, seniority
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Cover for absent colleagues hits its limit

Posted on 15 August 2012 by BMA employment relations team

The consultant contract provides for ‘reasonable cover’ for absent colleagues. But what is reasonable?

Tags: Consultants, contracts, working conditions, pay, locums
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An ace to play

Posted on 24 July 2012 by BMA employment relations team
The consultant had been attracted to working at the trust by the promise of a number of incentives, but years later he faced a huge bill and found his integrity was in question.
Tags: Contracts, consultants, programmed activities
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When is a redundancy not a redundancy?

Posted on 19 July 2012 by BMA employment relations team
When is a redundancy not a redundancy? When it’s a ‘disestablishment’. It’s when your post is discontinued and you are put out of a job, but because it’s described by a different word, there are none of the compensations of redundancy.
Tags: Consultants, redundancy
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Consultant's cross-border banding challenge

Posted on 29 June 2012 by BMA employment relations team
The English and Welsh consultant contracts contain some significant differences in their terms and conditions of service, and for locum consultants who work on either side of the border it is quite easy to lose track of which terms apply where.
Tags: Consultants, contracts, on-call work, locums
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Taking work-related stress seriously

Posted on 22 June 2012 by BMA employment relations team

The member, a consultant, had been off sick for many months; the diagnosis was work-related stress. There had been anger and tears leading up to him going off sick.

Tags: consultants, work-related stress, occupational health
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