On GB News this morning and in the Telegraph.
As above. Nurses could do this, so why tie up doctors when it is already difficult to get an appointment to see one?
Actually, the payment may be going up to £30 a shot. Easy money for some!
Is this what they’ll actually get after all overheads have been covered? We’ve had similar discussions about vets, dentist’s etc who are paid well, but we forget that ancillary staff, buildings, insurances etc etc has to come out of the cash we hand them.
I doubt it. GPs are independent practices and are paid per number of patients on their books.
As I understand it, the £20 (soon £30) per shot is paid to them separately, although I may be shown to be wrong.
In any event, in my view the problem is the present difficulty in patients actually seeing their doctor. It is usually a telephone consultation these days, certainly in my experience, although I don’t really understand how a face-to-face consultation would take any longer than a telephone consultation. Of course, I understand that they don’t want lots of patients sitting together when one of them might have the virus.
Bearing that in mind, if doctors are spending much of their available time in dishing out intramuscular injections (which anyone - even I!) could do, they are not gong to be available to see sick patients.
Let the nurses do the covid injections. Whenever I have blood taken, it’s done by a nurse - and that’s intravenous, which is rather more difficult to do.
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Yes, One Supervising Doctor, 10 jabbers get quick training to do the actual job (jab) efficiently.
I’d rather a nurse did mine any day of the week.
It’s a no brainer really.
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I agree about phone consultations. However, in all honesty, I suspect that that’s just as efficient.
You may recall I had gall stones a few months ago. Phone call to GP needed to set the ball rolling to get a scan. Feedback from the scan was via a phone chat with the receptionist, as there was nothing to be worried about.
My dysphagia has been getting worse. Phone call with GP has got ball rolling. Subsequent phone call with consultant at hospital has led to scan being set up (“swallow test”), which should happen within a couple of weeks. The outcome of this may involve a phone call or face to face.
The question is thus just how necessary are face to face consultations? I suspect that in reality, not as often as we’ve been used to in the past and maybe it’ll be for the best in the long term. Time will tell
The answer is that it depends.
Telephone consultations may be OK in many cases, especially as in an initial consultation, but there are many situations where a telephone consultation is inadequate.
For example, a doctor cannot feel a lump, examine a patient’s eye, or certainly explore an anal passage on a telephone consultation!
Hopefully, a competent doctor would, having undertaken an initial telephone consultation, ask the patient to come in to be physically examined. That’s what has happened to me anyway - er, and it wasn’t for an exploration of the anal passage!
Agreed @JBR. If phone consultations are going to stick around, maybe they ought to make it a more formalised triage type thing in which a trained person, perhaps not a doctor, who has access to your notes, makes an initial decision as to whether to get your local gp involved or whether (as in my last 2 cases) it’s to set the ball rolling for scans/tests etc.
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I think that another factor to support this is that fact that we are apparently becoming more and more short of doctors in this country.
I’m not sure of the root cause, but I suspect that for some reason the government has decided that we don’t need to train as many now.
Another problem is that having trained doctors in this country, many seem to then choose to go and work abroad, perhaps because conditions and pay are more attractive.
In any case, we really need to have more of them, one way or another, even by continuing to import them from other countries - on the provision that they definitely meet our existing standards.
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If my GP is paid £20/£30 a Covid jab, I would willingly pay him/her the same to get a face to face appointment.
Wishful thinking! 
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Trouble is that they can do the jab in less than half the time (10 min) of a face-to-face appointment. No prizes for guessing which they’d prefer!
Where do I apply to get a job? 
As it happened my first two Covid shots were carried out by nurses only at a local clinic. This was not my normal Doctor’s because at that time GPs were not giving Covid vaccinations because Scotty and his cronies cocked up the order and there were limited supplies (though by the time the second one was due GPs and Chemists were dishing the vaccines out).
I expect i will get the booster at my GP. He bulk bills ie he charges Medicare 85% of the scheduled fee and I don’t pay the difference, Chemists will get a “fee for service” from Medicare but for a GP it is a normal visit.
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I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure GPs are paid a similar amount for administering the flu vaccination each year. Which is why they always contact eligible people and ask them to make an appointment.
Again, I may be wrong, but I don’t believe there is a similar payment for the shingles or pneumonia vaccinations, which could explain why we’re generally not invited by our GPs to have these, but have to ring and ask.
Cynical? Moi?
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Same here.
Both Marge and I received our first two jabs at a local health establishment (not our usual GP’s) by nurses, probably retired and called in to help.
The booster I received recently was nominally done by a doctor (who I didn’t recognise) but the actual jab done by a nursing assistant.
We’ve also had chemists offering to do the jabs by appointment, and why not?
I agree with others. These jabs could be done quickly and easily by nurses in large numbers with one or two doctors present ‘just in case’.
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That is just like nurses there is nothing to stop them doing this. Had there been written into their training contract that as well as being paid after finishing their training they would be expected to remain working in this country for a certain amount of time, this would in some way repay their ‘free’ training and prevent what has now happened with both nurses and doctors.
Not just nurses either.
After I first qualified as a radiographer I worked for six years in the NHS. I then went to work (for more money) in Saudi Arabia for three years.
I think I had probably repaid my debts before toddling off abroad, though!
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I don’t think the GPs are usually doing the jabbing. Two of mine were done by a retired doctor who was temporarily part of the GP vaccination team the booster was by a nurse. My family also had administration by nurses. There’s a BMA article here, it’s not just jabbing they are expected to organise the whole programme and record data and handle any risk so they will need insurance admin etc (details if you check the embedded link) :
That makes me wonder if the Nurses got the same payment, as the Doctors, for doing exactly the same job!
It will be the practice that gets the payment not an individual GP.
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Not a bit surprised. GPs are already making mega money via QOF points for diagnosing people with high cholesterol, putting them on statins which they then stay on for ever more. kerching! 