I am 99% certain I’ll take 24-hour retirement, and cut my commitments when I hit 60 years.
I’m entitled to a full pension, so that’s almost certainly a given. Whether I take full retirement, or come back as a partner or salaried. I don’t know.
I have been a GP for 30 years, and I had always expected to work to 65 years. I still enjoy dealing with patients, but the screw on general practice income has taken its toll.
My income is going down and down since the second year of GMS 2, and it looks like it’s going to keep on going down. General practice is being set up to be the fall guy for the changes in the NHS, saying money has improved the service, even though we’re going to give you a lot less money.
For a year or two we did fine, but then political and public health started taking over the QOF and political winds started taking over something that was supposed to be purely evidence based. For instance, we run a practice of 10,000 patients and we had to go searching for a single patient, trying to get our QOF points for osteoporosis. They are attempting to apply population rules to small populations, which doesn’t work.
I recently resigned from being a trainer, because I couldn’t stand the paper work, but I still love training. But couldn’t stand all the e-portfolio stuff.
Dr George Paige is a GP in Coventry
