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British clinical academic staff win pay battle
The UK Department for Education and Employment has provided additional funding to guarantee that from 1997 medical schools will be able to pay clinical academic staff the award recommended by the Doctors' and Dentists' Review Body for doctors in the NHS. It has also provided additional funding to meet the 1996 award, estimated by university employers to be £4.8m ($7.2m).The principle of pay parity was established in 1969 to overcome a major crisis in recruitment to clinical academic medicine. Despite repeated delays and difficulties the pay parity has been maintained until this year, when the university employers said that they could not pay the recommended increase unless the government provided additional funding. Until now the government had refused, and clinical academic staff had been offered a pay award of 1.5%, the same increase as offered to other groups of university staff (26 October, p 1086). The review body recommended an average increase for NHS doctors of 3.8%.
The BMA had conducted a lobbying campaign to draw attention to the recruitment crisis in academic medicine--57 clinical chairs are vacant--to secure the support of ministers and members of parliament for continued pay parity.
Dr Colin Smith, chairman of the BMA's Medical Academic Staff Committee, said of the education department's announcement: "This is absolutely marvellous news. It will give clinical academics a tremendous morale boost. Most importantly of all, we now have a commitment to maintain pay parity in the future which will help to secure research, teaching, and medical innovation in the future."--LINDA BEECHAM, BMJ
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