How I got my GP job

As my certificate of completion of training date loomed, I was excited. In six short months, I would finally become an independent GP, a thought which was exciting and scary.

I would have my own patient list. I would provide cradle-to-grave care, having experienced the joys which come with this – during my training, I had seen three generations of the same family in one appointment, and that was one of my best moments.

However, this excitement quickly dissipated when I looked on the local medical committee website. Eight vacancies for the whole area, two of those being GP jobs. Could these really be all my options?

I did, however, have the chance of a job with my speciality trainee 3 practice. It has its challenges. It’s on the violent patients scheme, and it is at least 30 miles from where I live. I’ve had to drive throughout training, racking up at least 50,000 miles in three years on my trusty now nine-year-old Volkswagen (named ‘Ngozi’, which is Igbo for ‘blessing’).

I was offered a job, and I asked for some time to think about it. It’s a brilliant team. I was offered opportunities to provide undergraduate and postgraduate medical education, which was one of my deal-breakers. But there was that long commute for the foreseeable future, when I have a young family.

So, frantically, I thought I should apply to the other roles that were advertised. With both, I asked for informal visits to get a better understanding of the practices.

The first did not respond to my request for a visit, but instead offered an interview. I arrived, and the receptionist greeted me with a dismissive wave of the hand. The interview with one of the partners was genial enough but I could tell I hadn’t got the job when I was asked what I thought was the future of GP partnerships. I said I didn’t think there was a future, not under the current funding structures anyway.

Having been told I hadn’t got it, I asked the salary, out of curiosity, and was told it was £10,500 per session for a six-session week. Given that we all know the actual hours would be much longer, it was less pay than I was getting as an ST3.

The second practice did offer me an informal visit. The offer was better, I felt welcome, and it is a 15-minute drive from my one-year-old son’s nursery and 30 minutes from home. We agreed to have a ‘trial day’, which I thought went well. I could see myself working there.

It was a big practice, with an innovative approach to doing general practice, and progressive partners. Heck, I might even consider partnership here, I thought.

I was invited for an interview a few weeks later … and failed to get the job. ‘You were such a great candidate, we thought you could bring more of yourself to the interview,’ I was told. Having thought about this in more detail, I’m not sure I want to bring ‘more of myself’ to an interview where I know very little about the other party. Surely such vulnerability goes both ways and trust is earned, at least that’s what I think. I was gutted, I loved the practice and the team, but life does what life does.

I then sent emails to many local practices. Some replied with ‘good luck with your job search’, some were rather less friendly, and some didn’t reply at all, but what they all had in common was the lack of a job on offer. And I did consider myself a ‘competitive’ candidate, with a few letters at the back of my name besides my looming MRCGP, and managerial as well as clinical experience.

I am very pleased to say that I have now found a job. It allows me to become an educator. It keeps me in proximity to my exceptional trainer, whom I hope will remain a source of mentorship… and it’s 30 miles away and an hour’s drive from home on a good day.

Yes, I’ve taken the job in my training practice. And to be absolutely clear, I consider myself blessed. There are few GP vacancies available on the Somerset LMC website or elsewhere in the region but at least 50 registrars in my cohort are completing training at the same time. Some of them are going to have to make significant life adjustments, if they are fortunate enough to find a steady job at all.

And all this in a society that is desperately short of GPs, where patients often have to wait a long time for an appointment. We have the GPs to make the health service better – it seems absurd that we don’t have the jobs for them.

Ikenna Ogbu is a newly qualified GP based in Somerset, the outgoing BMA GPRC Severn GPRC representative and the committee's current education and training lead