Consultants are level 9"Senior SpRs" are level 8
"Junior SpRs" are level 7
SHOs are level 6
FY1s are not mentioned
"Consultant" practitioners are level 8
Nurse practitioners are level 7
Ward sisters are level 6
Newly qualified nurses are level 5
This utterly ridiculous ladder shows an utter contempt for the rather obvious fact that doctors are not nurses and that nurses are not doctors. It attempts to weave together everyone under the 'practitioner' umbrella.
This simple ladder shows how the government is dumbing down our health care system. Training, education, examinations and experience are not important in preparing workers for their jobs. Everyone can be crudely lumped together under the same simplistic umbrella.
Nurse are trained for nursing and do not have a sufficient foundation of knowledge to be let loose as doctors, unless they are willing to train to as rigorous a level as medically qualified doctors and obtain a proper medical degree. Experience as a nurse is virtually useless in training to perform doctoring roles, the two jobs are completely different, this doesn't appear to have stopped the government trying to bizarrely merge the two roles.
Just compare the level 7 workers as an example. The NP has a nursing degree followed by nursing experience and a very short course to become an NP which does not include any proper examinations, they are then deemed level 7 competent, whatever that means. A junior registrar has managed to get into medical school, pass all their exams to obtain a medical degree, worked several years gaining doctoring experience and obtained the appropriate rigorous Royal College exams. Yet these two very different groups are both lumped in the same box which claims they are level 7 competent:
"Experienced clinical professionals who have developed their skills and theoretical
knowledge to a very high standard. They are empowered to make high-level clinical
decisions and will often have their own caseload. Non-clinical staff at Level 7 will
typically be managing a number of service areas."
knowledge to a very high standard. They are empowered to make high-level clinical
decisions and will often have their own caseload. Non-clinical staff at Level 7 will
typically be managing a number of service areas."
One of these groups is highly trained and capable of practicing medicine independently to a high level, and the other is not. It is also clear that the DoH is trying to merge managers into this crude ladder that appears to be based upon very little logic.
By trying to lump a vast array of very different roles into the same simplistic boxes, the leaders of reform are insulting a vast array of highly skilled staff. Nurses are not trained to doctor, doctors are not trained to nurse, management roles are not practitioner roles; these different varied roles have evolved for a reason. The government is dragging us back to square one, and in the process advances in proper education and training are being purged.
By trying to make every NHS worker a branch of this universal health care practitioner, the government is dragging us back to the dark ages when anyone could have a crack at treating medical ailments. There was a reason that the different sub-specialised roles developed, it resulted in patients getting a much better service as proper regulation enabled dangerous quacks to be marginalised. The reverse is now true, the government's short sighted cost cutting agenda is already resulting in the minimally trained being dangerously let loose on the unsuspecting.
It is time that our roles were rigorously redefined. The BMA and Remedy must take a stand on this issue. Isn't it strange that the regulation of the medical profession is seen as such a problem, when the nursing profession can empower nurses to take on jobs beyond their means and at the same time allow these individual nurses to define their own areas of competency? There would be outcry if junior doctors were let loose in this manner to determine their own areas of ,within which they were free to independently practice; and junior doctors have been through much more rigorous training that includes a rather important thing called a medical degree. It's very sad that a medical degree and a proper education count for so little these days in this NHS of enforced equality.
