Working as normal!

Thursday is the British Medical Associations 'day of action' where the BMA, the doctors union, has called upon doctors to take industrial action in support of a disagreement with the government about doctors pensions. The BMA is asking doctors in hospitals and general practices to just undertake emergency work and not do any routine work. In general practice this would mean no routine appointments, not issuing routine repeat prescription requests and not giving out any results. They have suggested that general practices should be open for emergency consultations, visits and requests but do nothing else.

The disagreement about pensions is that the government has changed doctors pension arrangements so that we will have to work longer and make larger contributions for a small pension.But a typical NHS doctor who retires at 60 will still receive a pension of more than £48,000 a year for life, plus a tax-free lump sum of around £143,300. New NHS figures also show that 104 doctors retired recently with pension pots equivalent to £3.5million in the private sector, receiving at least £78,000 each year for the rest of their lives and a lump sum of at least £234,000. Not bad eh?

I think that industrial action will be counter productive, there is no support for this from our patients and we will still be well paid and have good pensions under the new arrangements. So the practice will be working as normal on Thursday.

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