Patients are urged to take pressure off GPs

IT SOUNDS like common sense to deal with an illness or ailment but a leading doctor has taken the step of urging the public to deal with health issues through selfcare, a trip to a pharmacy or even turn to the internet, in a bid to cut down hundreds of thousands of “avoidable” GP appointments every day.

The Royal College of GPs (RCGP) say up to a quarter of the more than one million people seeing a GP each day could be “avoidable or sorted out by another means”.

Chairwoman Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said the public should take up the “three before GP” mantra, asking them to first see whether their problem could be dealt with through self-care, seeking help from reputable online resources or getting assistance from a pharmacist.

The call comes as a warning was made that there are not enough family doctors working in England and that practices are closing at an “alarming rate”.

Prof Stokes-Lampard said GPs “really feel the pinch” over the winter period as she urged people to “think” before picking up the phone to call their surgery for an appointment.

She said: “We’re just asking people to stop and think, when you reach for the phone to book a GP appointment think: ‘Can I do this myself? Do I need some online help? Could a pharmacists help me?’ Of course for many things you’ll still be phoning the GP and that’s fine - that’s what we’re here for.

“But if just 10 per cent of people didn’t come and see their GP, but did one of those three things, that would make a huge difference. It would give us the capacity to deal with those who really need our help at a difficult time for the whole NHS.”

Prof Stokes-Lampard went on to say that GP workload had gone up “inexorably” due to the ageing population, and that pledges to increase the GP workforce by 5,000 by 2021 are in “jeopardy”.