Locum Shortage or the tale of Goose that Laid Gold Eggs by Dr Helen Bright

There is a shortage of locum doctors now leading to three times higher costs to GPs than several years ago.
Labour party politics along with medical profession is responsible for this. Locums have been persecuted by NHS employers and blamed for management deficiencies through sham peer reviews and reprisals against whistleblowers. Many locums lost their livelihoods for ever as GMC struck them off or damaged their reputations beyond repair even when there were no findings of wrongdoing against any patients and when they were no danger to public. What was behind it was ££££££££££. Locums have been employed through agencies and they naturally, had to charge for their costs. In revenge, Department of Health made sure there would be policies in place that would lead to damage of locum doctors reputations and and made the working conditions contrary to Human Rights and European Directive on temporary workers. GMC made their own policies by which complaints against locum doctors would be investigated as Stream 1 complaints (serious complaints).
Locums are like a goose that lays golden egg a day. On arrival to a place of work locum doctors have three jobs:
a) to sort out the backlog of patients and administration (it takes time to get locums and meanwhile work accumulates)
b) deal with the usual day to day work demands
c) do something about the future work. Doctors have duty to act in preventative manner (administration, or even innovation)
Therefore, NHS was getting a goose that laid gold egg each day. But it was not enough. So like in the famous tale, click on the picture by Milo Winter to read it, the end was sad and some people died.
Now GPs are lamenting they find it hard to get locum doctors. Pulse reported on 13th September 2011:

"Three out of four practices are finding it harder to book locum cover this year, with some turning to salaried GPs to cover partners' commissioning duties, according to an LMC survey.

Devon LMC quizzed 58 practice managers and locum GPs on their experience of locum availability over recent months, and found 40% believed booking locums was ‘harder' and 33% ‘much harder'.

Not a single respondent said that booking locums had become any easier.

Last month Pulse revealed agencies in some areas were now charging practices £160 an hour for locums.

Practices in Devon reported that filling sessions at short notice had become particularly difficult – with 86% of respondents saying that finding cover for sick leave was harder, compared with just 58% for LMC duties. One respondent said a practice had had to employ a salaried GP to cover a partner's commissioning duties".

Of course, it was not just locums that were persecuted by GMC's policies. Doctors in private practice suffered too. Both locums and those in private practice are more independent professionals. There area some people who cannot stomach the lack of control over everything and everyone. This applies to bullies too who love to destroy talented doctors.

Click on the image below to listen to talent and see how talented person gets treated when talent is unexpected because of image.