Health GPs to vote on changing work hours

GPS are to vote on changing their working hours to 9am to 5pm to reduce ‘strain,’ it has been reported.

Avon Local Medical Committee, which represents GPs in Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset, is to table a motion which could result in more than two hours knocked off GPs’ days.

The motion, which will be heard next month, would address an “imbalance between doctors’ workload and their workforce” and is part of a desire for “credible agreed workload measures”.

Typical GP practices are now running from 8am to 6.30pm, which would be reduced by two and a half hours if voted on by GPs, and accepted by the NHS.

The motion wants GP leaders to “further develop, publicise and strongly advocate worked-up plans to introduce safe workload limits for general practice that do not constitute a breach of contract”.

It will be heard at the annual conference of UK local medical committees, taking place on May 10 and 11 in York, the Mirror reports.

GPs are also concerned about the amount of abuse they are having to deal with and they are set to debate calls for a change in GMS regulations to allow the immediate removal from practice lists of patients “for any form of abuse”.

It follows evidence that the vast majority of GPs have experienced an increase in abuse over the past year, according to GPonline.com.

There have been complaints from the public about the difficulty they have seeing their favoured doctors at practices.

Many GPs are now working part-time. Nearly six out of 10 work three-day weeks, according to research reported in the Daily Mail. But at the same time a reported GMC poll last year found that more than half of GPs found themselves dealing with unmanageable workloads and a third felt at risk of burnout.

On top of this, a GPonline poll found that practices had 84 per cent more patient face-to-face appointments each day than considered to be safe by the BMA.

Many people are complaining, though, that there are not enough face-to-face appointments available.

Before the Covid pandemic, eight out of 10 appointments in the UK took place face-to-face, but that figure fell to fewer than half.

And today, still only 61 per cent of consultations are carried out in person.

If GPs did vote for 9am to 5pm working hours, the move would need to be accepted by the NHS to be able to go ahead.