It's not just medical staff who can't get their head around the whole A4C thing. I work in mental health, have spent 10 years getting qualified and thought that now I would get the same pay as someone doing the same job as me in the next county - surprise, surprise I'm still getting paid less (bitter, moi?). The whole thing sounded like a decent idea but pay scales have been sorted out by people who don't necessarily understand what job you do, what your training is etc. Nurses are easier to band cos everyone knows (roughly) what they do; doctors opted out of the whole thing (apparently the pay scales didn't go high enough!). The rest of us try to explain to well-meaning people that no we don't have a typical day, yes sometimes our patients kill themselves, and is it really more important to know how much an assessment/equipment weighs than what I actually do?