SAS Grade Doctors

The SAS Grade Doctor (SAS) is a term created to describe doctors in a variety of posts in hospital medicine where service delivery has been seen as the sole role, and not part of a more rounded long-term career post.

The doctors within this category comprise the following posts:

• Staff Grade Doctors
• Associate Specialist Doctors
• New Contract - Associate Specialist Doctors
• Specialty Doctors

Clinical Assistants and Hospital Practitioners are often grouped with the above SAS doctors. However their terms and conditions of service are significantly different from SAS doctors.

Doctors normally enter these posts after a period within their chosen speciality and do so for a range of professional and personal reasons. Many are tied to the area for family reasons and many work part-time. Some work as GP principles for most of the working week. They are a heterogenous group of doctors with often subtly differing needs. 

Doctors entering the grade are usually skilled and knowledgeable in their clinical speciality. However their experience varies, and the job description in this post takes little account of the non-clinical aspects of the doctor's job, e.g. on-going education and career development. Clinical departments, keen to get the work done, have often left these doctors with heavy clinical work loads and little else in the job description.

Local developments

 Clinical Tutor (Dr John Stubbing, Consultant Anaesthetist)  has dedicated time for the needs of the SAS doctors. As well as holding regular (2 monthly) Discussion Groups, Educational activities include Study Days on generic clinical and non-clinical issues, away days to look at areas of professional development, individual mentoring of SAS doctors, advice on appraisal, job planning and career development and social events. The Trust has agreed that all SAS Doctors on the old Staff Grade contract can have a minimum of a four hour session of non-clinical time each week for a whole time equivalent. SAS doctors are encouraged to be involved in teaching, in particular on the very popular undergraduate MiPs programme, and also to become Educational Supervisors for the Foundation Programme Doctors. 

With active encouragement SAS doctors in the Trust have taken up significant management roles, running undergraduate training programmes.

Study Leave: Study Leave allocation is available to all SAS Doctors at the same rate as consultants in the Trust. Discretionary points for Associate Specialists have been fairly awarded at the full amount recommended, ie 0.35 point per eligible doctor.

 In Southampton to aid with the implementation of the New Specialty Doctor contract a Contract Implemention Group has been set up to review all offered contracts to ensure fairness both to the individual SAS doctor and to the Trust. We expect this process to be completed by October 2009.