Hysteria mounts over “jaw-dropping” locum salaries paid to GP locums working weekend out-of-hours shifts in Cornwall.
So why are such salaries being paid? And why are GPs being vilified for giving up their weekends to travel some hundreds of miles to look after sick people when clearly local GPs are unable, or reluctant, to do these shifts themselves? When GP partners are completely overstretched during the week, facing all sorts of recruitment and capacity challenges themselves, it’s not that unrealistic for them to have the weekend off.
GPs and their practices need support, and freelance GP locums are there to support them when that need arises. In any such market, market forces will prevail. The solution is to not be surprised when it happens, but actually plan resources and adopt solutions like locum GP chambers to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
