By the way... Why would anyone be a GP today?

MUCH of the concern surrounding the pressure on the NHS is to do with the difficulties that we all encounter with our first port of call for healthcare — general practice.

There are problems with access, with many people having trouble obtaining an appointment to see their doctor promptly; there are fears about what to do if there is an emergency out of hours; and in some areas people even struggle to get registered with a practice in the first place.

In recent years, GPs themselves have suffered from poor public relations. It all began with the 2004 contract which gave many GPs the opportunity to withdraw from providing outof-hours care.

The public could, perhaps, be forgiven for believing that their doctors were backing out of commitments for which they had previously signed up, and for thinking that on-call work at nights and weekends goes with the territory. The atmosphere has not been helped by the fact that ever since that change, the government has been floundering in its attempts to provide some sort of service, and the buck has always had to stop at the accident and emergency departments of hospitals, placing them in a state of continuing stress.

However, part of the reason GPs were keen to withdraw their previous 168 hour per week commitment to their patients was a mounting sense of stress within the profession — they were increasingly exhausted and there was an undeniable impact on their family lives as the nature of their jobs changed.

Their workload had grown as the population increased and medical care had become more complicated with people living longer and many patients having multiple problems.

Furthermore, administrative tasks were being piled on top of quality performance targets and inspections, appraisals, and revalidation. In this increasingly hostile public arena, what has been missing is some hard data on the GP workload. But now a study based on analysis of 100 million consultations, and published in The Lancet, has shown that GP workload has increased by 18 per cent since 2007.

Meanwhile, the Department of Health has seen fit to cut pharmacy budgets by £170 million, which could result in the loss of up to 25 per cent of our High Street pharmacies, despite the fact that the public have been encouraged to seek the expertise of their local pharmacist instead of their GP for the treatment of minor illness or injury.

So when you read about GPs cracking under the pressure of their workload, this isn’t just hype — they really are doing more than ever. The answer is more GPs, but ask yourself, why would brilliant young minds decide on a career in general practice as it now stands? I have a solution, but more on that another time . . .