Continuing work in your organisation

Many doctors towards the later part of their working lives choose either to reduce their hours, or to retire and return to work part time. There is no reason why you should not return to work in your own organisation, but once you have retired, you should understand that the organisation has no duty to employ you, and so you may want to discuss such arrangements with your manager and medical director before you make any decisions. You should not expect to return to work on the same basis that you were previously employed.

In general, once you have retired from the NHS pension scheme you will no longer be allowed to contribute to an NHS pension scheme (you should take professional advice on this as pension arrangements are extremely complex), and there may be limits on how much you are allowed to earn before this impacts on your pension (abatement rules may apply). If you are under state retirement age, you and your employer may still have to pay National Insurance contributions. You will not usually receive discretionary awards after retirement, nor continue to be paid existing awards, although some awards may be pensionable.

Before you approach your own organisation about returning to work after retirement, it can be helpful to think about it from the organisation’s perspective: why would they want to employ you, and what can you offer them (probably, quite a lot)?

More information is available on our page on Retaining staff.