Sessional Doctors: In-depth

Summary

A sessional doctor is any doctor who does not work as a principal within a practice. They work a number of sessions for the practice, ranging from full time to a single locum session.

Sessional doctors fall into two categories:

• salaried GPs

• locum/freelance GPs.

Employers' Duties

Practices should:

• provide sessional doctors with the equipment and information they need to provide effective services to the practice’s patients

• treat sessional doctors as colleagues; where sessional doctors are salaried employees of the practice, the practice should involve them in non-clinical activity such as practice meetings and in-house training and development