Pressures are leaving doctors struggling to coPe

Dr Julian Spinks, a GP and vice chair of the Kent LMC, said: “I’m afraid I’m not surprised so many of my colleagues are thinking of leaving the profession.

“We have an ageing profession in Kent so there’s a fair number of those which are reaching retirement.

“But the big difference is while many of those might have stayed on a little bit beyond that now it is such a difficult environment to work in they’re thinking of leaving.

“We have a profession which struggles with inadequate premises, it cannot recruit new doctors to replace those that leave, and there is financial pressure which is pushing practices to the wall.”

Dr Spinks said extra funding was needed to improve GP surgeries and called for schemes to attract new doctors to train as GPs to prevent the situation from getting any worse.

“It’s never been an easy job being a GP, we’ve always worked long hours, but the demand is rising faster than the number of doctors,” he told kmfm.

Dr Spinks said a newly launched scheme to provide mental health care for under pressure GPs had already been “overwhelmed” by demand from doctors suffering anxiety and burn-out.

“Ultimately the worst thing is it is starting to impact on safety and quality of care that we can provide for our patients,.”