How many hours do hospital consultants work?
40 hours a week. NHS consultants workload is described by something called a Programmed Activity (‘PA’). A PA is 4 hours of work (half a day). And a full time consultant is expected to do 40 hours = 10 x 4 hour PA blocks.
And this is generally a mix of ‘normal’ (clinical, i.e. seeing patients) and ‘other’ PA’s (non-clinical, e.g. teaching, research, audit, clinical governance, management). Most full time consultants do about 6 clinical, and 4 non-clinical PAs. The majority of this work is 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday.
Hence if a consultant works normal hours, then they would be expected to work 40 hours per week.
Though full-time consultants are contracted for 10 PA’s per week, in reality this can be flexible.
For example, in some cases consultants can group their work to have some weeks of intense work (e.g. being a ‘consultant of the week’, and based on the wards seeing acutely ill patients); and other (less intense) weeks where they are working much less intensely – or are even off work without needing to use their Annual Leave.
Note. Full time NHS consultants currently earn £94-126k a year [“that’s not a bad salary for 40 hours, hmm” MyHSN Ed]. But incorporating bonuses and other payments, the average pay is £143k a year. Many consultants private practice as well, and have much larger salaries.
Summary
We have described how many hours hospital consultants work (40 hours) – for which they are well paid. Many do private practice and/or medicolegal work on top. We hope it is clearer now.
