IN MY VIEW... Just forget bribing doctors to be GPs

THE plan to pay a £20,000 incentive to encourage young doctors to enter general practice is doomed to fail. It is but a sticking plaster on the manpower crisis.

Our leaders at Westminster fail to understand that the current independent contractor model — in which each GP surgery is a small business, as has been the case since the birth of the NHS in 1948 — is broken.

Today’s doctors no longer want to shoulder the task of business ownership, with its stresses of owning property, employing staff, and inspections.

Their preference is for salaried employment, perhaps along similar contractual lines to consultant colleagues in hospitals.

This would give them the freedom to practise the best medicine for their patients, keep uptodate, fulfil their annual appraisals, and avoid the burdens of administration.

Yet the NHS chief executive claims the agreement between the British Medical Association trade union and NHS England to allocate these funds is a triumph.

I doubt it. Stuffing the mouths of doctors with gold will not work.

Is there really no one with the ability to think outside the box and create a new system? We need one in which the new wave of GPs can both practise medicine and have a work-life balance.

Reduce the burden of bureaucracy and stop forcing GPs to be business people, and students will be banging on the doors to go into general practice again — without any need for a golden handshake.