CRISIS IN THE SURGERY
»»86% struggling with mental health »»Patients ’at risk’ due to overwork
PATIENTS’ lives are at risk as their GPs become swamped with work, it was claimed last night.
The warning came after 86 per cent of family doctors admitted in a poll
their mental health is suffering.
Some are seeing up to twice as many patients in a day as is recommended under safety guidance.
Dr Amy Small said: “We are getting decision fatigue and that, in turn, is going to affect patient care and patient safety.”
PATIENTS’ lives are at risk because GPs are so overworked it’s affecting their mental heath, it has been claimed.
A poll of local doctors in Scotland found 86 per cent who responded had felt anxiety, stress, or depression in the last year.
Campaigners say a shortage of GPs and a massive surge in demand for their services has led to “burn-out”.
Now the Scottish Government has been urged to recruit hundreds of new GPs to ease the crisis.
Midlothian locum GP Dr Amy Small revealed the shocking survey results on behalf of the Rebuild GP Campaign, run by BMA Scotland and the General Practice Defence Fund.
She said: “We have hit a point now where things are so tight in general practice that we have this perfect storm where issues of retention and recruitment are now actually causing issues of patient safety.
“GPs have been calling for some time for more recruitment. The Scottish Government had promised 800 GPs by 2027 but we have yet to see evidence of that.
“GPs are retiring early because of pension changes that are harshly penalising them and GPs are burning out because workload is just overwhelming.”
Dr Small described the situation as “completely overwhelming”.
She added: “I have seen friends who I thought were unshakeable people. People I thought would go on forever as full-time partners now resigning completely from their partnerships.
“People who I never thought in a million years would be affected and are now having to seek mental health support and are unable to do clinical work.
“The numbers with depression and anxiety are increasing. People generally are struggling to find a workload balance.
“And I think as soon as you throw something else into the mix, like personal illness or having to manage a young family, that one thing tips it.”
Dr Small warned that the pressure could impact on patients’ treatment.
She said: “My concern is because we are having to make too many decisions we are getting decision fatigue and that, in turn, is going to affect patient care and patient safety.
“If you have got a doctor who is tired, working more hours than they should be, who has already spoken to 50 other patients that day, you are worried about what decisions are going to be made.
“We know that safe patient contacts should be about 25 a day but doctors are seeing far more.
“There’s also the issue that, because
patients are not managing to get through, they are dealing with things themselves.
“I have had patients saying to me, ‘We were told to not contact the NHS and stay at home so I didn’t want to bother anyone.’
“And then if they phone and are told they are number 75 in the queue or there are no appointments left that day – then they are going to sit at home with things that if we had been better staffed, better resourced, we would have been able to manage.” Dr Small said the increase in mental health problems among patients because of delays in getting them operations has soared.
“Patients might have a sore hip but they are waiting two years to get operated on. That sore hip has meant they can’t go out, they are socially isolated, they are depressed, they have maybe gained weight through that and are maybe battling other diseases like diabetes.
“How can you deal with that full whammy of multiple co-morbidities in 10 minutes? If that is your last appointment of the day and you have just dealt with 35 people prior to that, the person is not going to get the best care they deserve.
“We might not pick up the subtleties of what else patients are trying to bring us. We can do our job efficiently, or we can do it really well.
“We want to do it really well but, when there is absolutely no slack in the system, it’s absolutely impossible to meet the full needs of patients.
“It is the perfect storm of years of underfunding, years of lack of investment combined with the pandemic and high patient demand.”
Dr Small said while there was more government support in Scotland than in England, “it’s still not enough”.
The GP called for investment in premises which she said were “woefully inadequate” and too small to house the allied health staff the Scottish Government says will help ease the burden on GPs.
But she said even if premises were large enough there is a dearth of allied health professionals to do the work.
“We don’t need to just retain and recruit GPs but all other allied health professionals so we can release time to care for our patients in the best way and make sure we are the expert medical generalists that we should be.”
And she called on ministers to act quickly and “not wait until it all collapses”.
Labour’s health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie demanded the Scottish Government recruit more GPs as a matter of urgency.
She said: “What the pandemic has done is make this worse.
“The Scottish Government promised they would deliver 800 GPs and also promised multi-disciplinary teams at surgeries. This hasn’t been fully delivered.
“It is critical if we are to avoid more GPs leaving the profession that the Scottish Government acts quickly to support existing GPs and ensure the numbers are increased and multidisciplinary teams put in place.”
The Scottish Government insisted it was making GP services a priority.
A spokesperson said: “We have already delivered a record number of GPs in Scotland, with more per head than any other country in the UK. We’re committed to further increasing the number by 800, by 2027.
“We are on track to meet that commitment and have also recruited over 2400 healthcare experts through the GP Contract to support practices.
“Trainee recruitment last year has so far been the most successful year of any of the last five, with 98 per cent of GP training posts having been filled.”
86% of GPs say they have felt have felt anxiety, stress, or depression in the past year
25 safe number of patient contacts in a day... GPs are regularly seeing more