The National Health Service (NHS) is one of the largest employers in the world, and is the biggest in Europe, with over 1.5 million staff.
For the NHS a typical day includes:
The NHS covers the full spectrum of primary and secondary care, from antenatal care and treatment for long-term conditions, to emergency treatment and end-of-life care.
Adapting to Working in the UK:
The GMC offers ‘Welcome to UK practice’ workshops free of charge. The session will help Doctors who are new to the country, to understand the ethical issues that will affect them and their patients on a day to day basis. For more information, and to book yourself onto one of these workshops, visit the
GMC website. The GMC also offer an
online ‘Welcome to UK Practice’ tool which you may find helpful in your first few weeks.
Health Education England also provide a range of
e-learning courses which may be beneficial for you to complete before you come to work in the NHS.
NHS Pay & Conditions:
Everyone who joins the NHS is guaranteed a salary that matches their ability and responsibilities and are given every opportunity to increase it through training and development. More information on Doctor’s pay scales can be found
here.
NHS Pensions:
All employers in the UK are required by law to enrol employees into a
workplace pension unless the employee opts out. This means a percentage of your pay is put into the pension scheme automatically, and in most cases your employer adds money into the pension scheme too.
The NHS has an excellent
pension scheme and is one of the most generous and comprehensive in the UK. Every new employee automatically becomes a member and you will get an excellent package of pension benefits, fully protected against inflation and guaranteed by the government.
Insurance & Indemnity:
If you are working for an NHS trust, the organisation you work for will receive indemnity through a clinical negligence scheme. You should always check with your employer what provisions they have in place for this.
If you are working or planning to work outside of the NHS, you should always make sure that you have adequate and appropriate insurance or indemnity arrangements in place covering the full scope of your medical practice in the UK. This is to ensure that if anything goes wrong, you have adequate and appropriate insurance or indemnity to compensate the patient.
Further information regarding insurance and indemnity can be found
here.