£1,700-a-shift doctors: They’re quitting full-time jobs to take well-paid posts as locums
Doctors are deserting the NHS to treble their salaries working as locums, according to MPs.
A growing number are quitting their full-time hospital posts to make a career as professional agency staff. Locums typically earn £1,760 a shift – equivalent to £240,000 a year – more than three times the £75,000 average salary for consultants.
A report by the Public Accounts Committee highlights that the NHS spent £2.6 billion on agency staff last year, a rise of a quarter compared with 2012/13. Hospital bosses who spoke to the committee admitted that a rising number of doctors and nurses are choosing careers as ‘professional temporary locums’.
Andy Hardy, chief executive of University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire, said: ‘There is evidence that some doctors and nurses and other professionals are making the choice to become professional temporary staff, but that is not across the whole of the country.
‘London is a special case in terms of pay rates. If I look at my own A&E, we are fully staffed at the consultant level. But there are other specialities where we have to rely on agency staff, and some of those are permanent agency staff – that is what they do for a career.’
Matthew Hopkins, chief executive of Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, in Essex, added: ‘There are staff – not just doctors, but nurses and others – who are making that choice.’
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