----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Hobart"
Subject: Re: Naive Question
> > Answering phone calls at home will not count as scheduled work in the
> > new
> > contract, it will be considered under the derisory on-call supplement!
>
> Wrong. The on call payment is purely an availability payment - schedule
> 16 para 1. Work done whilst on call "will be treated as counting towards
> the number of Direct Clinical Care Programmed activities". Schedule 5
> para 1. Telephone consultation is work.
But isn't that getting petty (which doesn't surprise me with this
contract!)? Schedule 16 para 3 states that category B on-call supplement
"applies where the consultant can typically respond by giving telephone
advice" which suggests to me that the availability supplement is inclusive
of this advice. And I can't believe A&E consultants can rack up more than
about half an hour per week on telephone advice. If they're regularly giving
telephone advice for more than this amount of time, then there must be
something badly wrong with their service! Which brings us back to schedule 5
para 2 where excessive on-call work of this nature will "trigger a job plan
review".
I rarely give "remote" (i.e. telephone) clinical advice in my service, about
once a year maximum, it's just plain bad medicine if you ask me. I do give
"admin" type of advice a little more often, but maybe one telephone call per
month at most. It's not even worth counting...
Adrian Fogarty
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