GP locums face a ‘conspiracy to hijack workload’, a sessional GPs committee representative and NASGP member has warned colleagues.
“Do not allow yourself to be cajoled into seeing more patients than you feel able to, in a shorter paid time than you can,” Dr Alicia Barnes advised earlier this month.
Dr Barnes was responding to advice from the Future of General Practice report published last month.
“Mandating locums to do admin – well that will work out poorly for practices. If a practice has a budget to pay a locum for seven hours of work, they should be able to book a locum to complete the tasks they feel meet their needs,” Dr Barnes writes.
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, NASGP chair, said: “Dr Barnes’s article is essential reading for any GP locum who feels under pressure to perform ‘admin’ tasks for patients who they are either unfamiliar with or may not have involvement in the patient’s ongoing management.
“As GPs, we are experts at using simple language to explain complex issues to patients. But this has clearly backfired when we have been using the same language with politicians.
“As I mentioned last week, and what Dr Barnes describes so eloquently describes, what GPs colloquially refer to as admin is in fact far more complicated than what most people would think of as admin. Such non-contact clinical management is at least as taxing as performing an actual consultation. The fact that it is indirect simply adds more risk, and that needs to be reflected in demands placed on all GPs, not just GP locums.”