Unless we act quickly, we’ll lose more talented doctors

YET another friend from medical school, a GP in her early-60s, has announced she’s retiring.

She has had enough — as well as increased bureaucracy, she told me the fear of being accused of malpractice, and rising levels of complaints from frustrated patients, has finally worn her down.

It used to be so different. My GP father-in-law didn’t retire until his mid-60s (other doctors of his generation often kept going into their 70s).

But, as he said, in his day the drug regimens were less complicated, patients less litigious — and doctors felt better supported. There’s also been the recent fiasco around NHS pension reforms, which meant doctors who wanted to go on working were financially penalised for doing so.

This is all adding to the current manpower crisis in the NHS, with the number of GPs falling just as demand is rising. There’s been a belated attempt to persuade doctors to come out of retirement, but it feels like too little, too late.

Unless more is done to improve GP working conditions, I fear many new graduates will choose either to work parttime, or leave the country once qualified.

Having said all this, when my mother, who’s 93, recently had a fall, a lovely GP made a home visit within a few hours.

There’s still much that’s wonderful about general practice, but the Government really must pull its finger out to sort the current mess.