Recruiting a salaried GP

Decide what you need

As a first step, consider how many hours, days or sessions the GP will need to work and what pattern the workload will take. Think about:

• Are you happy for someone to turn up, see a list of patients then leave?
• Do you want the GP on the premises from opening until closing time?
• Will the salaried GP hold a list, or do you prefer that only partners take on the role of named GP?

If you need nine or 10 sessions of GP time, you will widen your pool of candidates if you consider sharing this between two (or more) doctors.

Where to look

It’s not easy to recruit right now. Many areas insist that recruitment is done through the NHS jobs website. While this is the official application portal it is usual to cast your net wider and send interested parties to your online NHS jobs advertisement.

Doctors looking for work will search on CCG, LMC and federation websites. You could also ask your local first-five group and programme directors to spread the word.

If you are willing to pay to find the right person, and if your area is able to offer a recruitment payment to incoming doctors, consider advertising in national medical journals or trade magazines, such as Pulse.

In addition, targeted paid advertising through social media can be powerful and economical.

Attracting the right candidate

When you consider what you need from your salaried doctor, also think about what you can offer.

The salary is likely to be the biggest factor, and will be influenced by your local GP workforce situation.

Historically, practices have not stated this up front, but if you offer an attractive pay package, declaring it in your advertisement might bring more response.

Consider whether you could offer paid admin time, study leave or a study budget and payment of other expenses (college or other memberships, recertification costs for appropriate skills). This may also help you stand out.

Challenges

Remember that flexibility is one of the reasons that GPs choose salaried working over partnership. So be flexible in your recruitment approach. For instance:

• If you need a candidate to unlock some days of the week, can you accommodate their needs with childcare, school or nursery drop-offs?
• If a good candidate needs to start early or leave late on certain days, can you accommodate this?
• If you employ other salaried GPs, should you offer them the same allowances?
• Will they all need different contracts or salaries to reflect their different duties?
• Can you accomplish this without upsetting anyone, or ending up at an industrial tribunal?

Your partners and management team may have different views, so agree your approach in advance.

The Equality Act (2010) gives protection to people’s rights in terms of certain characteristics such as disability, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and maternity. Remember that a candidate’s protected characteristics must not influence whether you choose to employ them. For example, it would be an offence to refuse to employ a young female GP who is hoping to start a family on the grounds that her maternity leave would be inconvenient.

The interview

Many practices invite interested candidates for an informal meeting with some of the practice team and to review their CV and other documentation before a formal interview.

The formal interview should ideally be in a meeting room, not a partner’s consulting room. The power dynamics can be intimidating enough without putting the candidate in the patient’s chair.

An interview panel should comprise one or more partners, the practice manager and perhaps a member of the wider practice team – but ideally no more than three people.

They should adopt a standardised approach with a set of questions that will be measurably reproducible if multiple candidates are interviewed, though the interview will be adapted to the candidate’s CV and skills.

Contracts and duties

The BMA produces a model contract for salaried GPs that can be adapted to your purposes if you do not already have one. This, and other resources are available on the BMA website.

Any changes to duties, hours or requests for flexibility should be agreed and signed off by everyone at the contract stage to avoid future disagreement.

Joining the team

Maybe your practice already has a collegiate atmosphere with regular educational meetings and breaks for morning coffee and afternoon tea, or maybe you prefer to work separately. Either way, keep a dialogue going with the new doctor so you can deal with queries before they turn into problems. If you don’t have regular timetabled breaks, consider appointing a partner, longer-serving salaried GP or another member of the team to act as a mentor while they get started. More formally, it would be good to offer an in-house appraisal meeting at least annually.

Main points

• Preparation is key.
• Don’t limit your pool of applicants by being closed-minded to new ways of doing things.
• Be flexible in what you offer potential candidates.
• Involve the team in any decisions about concessions.
• Enquire with your CCG about incentives to aid recruitment.

Give your practice vacancy the competitive advantage you need to attract the candidates you want. Contact the Pulse Practice Jobs team on 0207 214 0570 or email [email protected] for more information.