Junior doctors threatened with GMC referral for refusing locum work

Some NHS trusts are being overly forceful in imposing the new junior contract, the BMA has warned, after juniors at one trust were found to be threatened with referral to the General Medical Council (GMC) for refusing to take on locum work.

Implementation of the new contract began last October. NHS Employers said that the vast majority of the 42,000 doctors in training who are eligible to move to the new contract have now done so. Those remaining will be moved by October 2017.

Jeeves Wijesuriya, chair of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors committee, told The British Medical Journal that several trusts around the country had been misinterpreting a clause in the contract requiring trainees to initially offer the spare hours they wish to work as a locum to an NHS staff bank.

Wijesuriya said he had contacted University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust asking them to retract briefing notes sent to doctors which suggested that juniors may be referred to the GMC if they do not take on locum work.

He said: “People are misunderstanding aspects of the contract. We have just publicly had to challenge University Hospitals Birmingham because of its misinterpretation of the locum clause, and we continue to work with the trust locally to try to resolve this.

“That’s just one example of many, where either mistaken or deliberate misunderstanding of the new contract has been an issue.

“This process must not include threats of GMC referral or anything else that goes beyond the requirements of the terms and conditions of service.”