You might not have realised it yet, but the psychiatric services are pretty much in crisis. I commented a few weeks back about a patient who was stuck in a hospital in London, on a section, and surrounded by psychiatric staff most of whom could not speak English.
There have also been reports about the dearth of UK trained doctors going into psychiatry, so local psychiatric trusts have been struggling to recruit anyone of any calibre (and, by God, it shows).
If there are few doctors in training, then we need to expect other grades to fill the gaps in service provision, and these are often staff grade doctors. Many of these doctors are in this grade because they won't or can't become consultants. They are very variable in quality.
My local psychiatric trust has just gone through yet another reorganisation, lumping together two mental health trusts that aren't even contiguous. There seems to be actually no logic to this at all.
There is a crisis in junior doctor staffing, so they have had to offer special deals to some of the psychiatric staff grades to stay and work there. And do you know how much they are being offered?
£19,000 a month. A month!!
The existing staff who are still in training or are in substantive posts have been offered a pay freeze or a cut!
This is quite outrageous. We are forking out a fortune on inferior quality of the worst kind! What are the authorities doing about it?
Expect more blather and bullshit. Maybe Lord Darzi can help in psychiatry? He seems to think he can reorganise General Practice, so I'm sure the good Lord can sort psychiatry out.
I know Lord Darzi knows nothing about psychiatry, but he knew nothing about General Practice and that didn't stop him.
In the meantime, I could do a staff grade job for £19K a month.
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4 comments:
That's totally obscene...Bet many of your patients are subsisting on less than 19K a YEAR...
I put a new link to my post “Wake-up Call” to British Psychiatry. The problem is that it is too late.
The Cockroach Catcher
As a british graduate and in psychiatry and working hard.
I find that most of the decent folks have gone, Its like a desert in all middle grade specialisms
Theyve upped and left
The government was just too busy laying down the propaganda and people have voted with their feet
My psychiatrist cares, but it's largely irrelevant since he has little time to see me and little in the way of other help to offer with all the cutbacks. His letters to my GP show clearly how he is too rushed to listen to what I tell him. His job must be so unfulfilling when he has so many patients and so few resources.
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