Points from Letters: Added Years

Abstract

average superannuable income of the 80 main Swansea principles for the year ended March 1974, a figure which included seniority payments. Published surveys have suggested that the local work load is up to twice the national average. Since April 1974 reorganization has brought all sectors of the profession into management participation with an everincreasing number of managers in the Health Service whose duties and salaries are published. The nearest managers to the general practitioner are those at district level and the regional medical officers. For a five-day week they average a superannuable income of £7,500. General practitioners, with other clinicians, provide more than a five-day service but are unique in having to provide their own locums for sickness, study, and annual leave from income; and since reorganization participation in management through a host of new advisory committees, completely unpaid, make further inroads into the unsocial (leisure) periods. Kindersley recognized a shortfall in remuneration from 1966 which is still uncorrected and increasing. Achievements with dynamism, buying added years, and threshold awards are only tinkering with the problem when the basic contract is faulty. We owe a duty to our dependants and successors to correct the discrepancy or our principal concern, the patient, will find the standard of his primary care in jeopardy.-I am, etc.