Our much loved GP Pam Kenny is being forced to retire because she has reached 60. Her request to continue working just one day a week and provide holiday cover has fallen on deaf ears.
Such was the outrage in my community which she has served for 32 years that villagers rallied together and collected a petition with more than 750 signatures. All to no avail.
Dr Kenny gave my family the utmost professional care and she will be much missed. It is such a terrible waste of her valuable skills and I hope she will somehow be able to continue using them.
Under the terms of her partnership contract, she must leave at 60. But surely if you are of sound mind and body, you want to continue working and are so highly regarded by those you serve, why should you be forced to retire at 60? Isn’t 60 the new 50?
Couldn’t agree more, Ellee. There are thousands of stories of waste like this. The standard retirement age is past it’s sell-by date, brought in, as it was, to help a workforce that was mostly male and engaged in manual labour at a time when few people expected to live into their sixties.
I heard John Browne from BP speak on this last week and naturally I blogged about it
I read your John Browne article and was impressed at the depth you went into, as well as downheartened at the dismissive way we treat our older folk.
Dr Kenny was always at the end of the phone when I needed advice, we all considered her a friend. She was particularly good with older folk because she always had time to listen.
The interesting bit for me is that as a founding partner of the partnership she must have been instrumental in putting in the age of retirement at 60. As it happens a twist of fate means that the other partners are now using it as a means of removing her from the partnership. A lesson to everybody choose your partners and contracts carefully.
This woman has so much to give. How irrelevant her age is!! In the newspaper article it seems she is only interested in serving the community, not continuing with the partnership. I fail to see why this cannot be accomodated.
My mother retired early as a GP, and was always being asked to come back ! Her partnership used to have some quite senior Doctors, who provided the flexibilty for the GP partnership to provide the full service it used to do before the current government.
Now GP’s are looking like a salaried service (but what a salary – some over GBP100k !! For less work than used to be the case under 24 hrs personalised cover !). Less committed to patients – whom they will increasingly know personally less and less.
Manditory age related retirement is a waste of human resource. But GP’s in general have been down graded.
Thats terrible isn’t there some way of getting her back in? Who exactly decided she had to retire? In a nation which has an increasing aging population unilateral decisions on retirement ages is silly if you ask me..
p.s interesting blog!
I guess that her contract which she helped create is the reason she is out of a job, hopefully she will find something else and continue to use these skills. She is far too good not to find similar work.
As Geoff says, it is a lesson to everybody to choose their contracts and partners with care.
Hi Ellee
I notice that the doctor is not asking to stay on full-time. Perhaps she recognises the need for change and the patients don’t want to.
Hi Ellee in my case I see it as the new 40! I think that is terrible but I am told that ageism doesnt exist by those under fifty but those over fifty cant find jobs! strange old world. its bright and sunny here in Brighton after two days of miserable rain.
Take care
Rob