Half of GP trainees would consider ‘golden handshake’ incentive to relocate

Half of GP trainees would accept a ‘golden handshake’ financial incentive to relocate for a GP job, a new survey suggests. 

In the annual survey by health thinktank The King’s Fund, exactly 50% said such an incentive would persuade them to apply for a job in an area they would not otherwise consider.  

No such scheme currently exists for newly-qualified GPs after NHS England scrapped the Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme (TERS), an incentive for GP trainees to work in under-doctored areas, last year. 

In the survey, only 12.7% of the 204 respondents reported feeling ‘confident’ they would find a long-term GP post within six months of qualifying, while more than six in 10 said they were not confident.  

Some 29.4% said they were ‘not at all confident’ and 32.8% were ‘not confident’ of finding long-term work. 

A shortage of vacancies in their preferred area was the most cited reason for this lack of confidence (74.9% of respondents), followed by competition from other GPs (59.4%). 

The Government has sought to tackle record competition ratios for GP specialty training posts through new legislation. 

The Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act, passed last week, seeks to prioritise UK graduates and others in a select ‘priority group’ for places before other eligible applicants. 

More than a third of survey respondents (37.7%) said they were considering working abroad and nearly one in 10 (9.8%) were considering leaving medicine altogether after qualifying. 

For those planning to stay in medicine in the UK, 28.9% said they planned to work full-time one year after qualifying, which fell sharply to 11.8% after five years and to 5.9% after 10 years. 

Beccy Baird, senior fellow at the King’s Fund, said the survey was a warning that employment bottlenecks meant ‘GPs risk being left in the waiting room for work’. 

She also argued the imminent extension of the additional roles reimbursement scheme (ARRS), to allow PCNs to recruit experienced GPs, risked a ‘sticking plaster’ measure becoming ‘business as usual’. 

Ms Baird said: ‘A huge amount of work has gone into attracting talented doctors into specialist training for general practice, and this is clearly bearing fruit as we’ve seen an increase in newly-qualified GPs.   

‘But without a fundamental re-wiring of the funding system and a continued increase to practice-level roles, a highly skilled cohort of new GPs risk being left in the waiting room for work, or jumping between short-term posts. That brings an obvious risk of burnout for doctors and could undermine the continuity of care that patients so rightly deserve.’ 

’While the recent GP contract started to reset this by transferring money back to practices to employ GPs, the extension of the Additional Role Reimbursement Scheme risks what was originally set as an ‘emergency measure’ becoming business as usual, slapping fresh sticking plasters onto old ones.

Calling for the imminent publication of the updated NHS 10-year workforce plan, Ms Baird added that King’s Fund research shows ‘time and again’ that easily getting a GP appointment is ‘one of the most important priorities for the public’.

‘This will be essential if the Government is expecting GPs to play a central role in delivering more care in the community.’ 

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