IN MY OPINION . . . PATIENTS ARE RIGHTLY FED UP

PUBLIC satisfaction with GP services has fallen to its lowest recorded level, it was revealed last week.

The news was received with sadness and disappointment by many GPs, but I know from talking to my colleagues that, frankly, few were surprised.

Winston Churchill famously said in 1941: ‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job.’ In general practice the most important tool that’s been taken away is time — the time to spend with each patient.

Since the NHS was founded in 1948, what we can achieve medically, and the expectations of the public, have grown massively. This has coincided with a growing population and a workforce that has not increased to meet those expanding demands.

GPs’ frustration at not being able to provide the service they would wish for was underlined by a survey for the British Medical Association last October, which revealed that 50 per cent feel that their workload is excessive, impacting on the quality and safety of care.

The ever-increasing workload pressure was a major reason that GPs opted to withdraw from providing 24-hour care when the chance arose with the new contract introduced by the Labour government in 2004. Stepping away from being available out of hours did untold damage to the relationship between GPs and their patients.

Another nail in the coffin of that relationship has been the change in the way patients are registered with a GP surgery: they are no longer allocated to a named GP, but registered with the entire practice.

With that move we lost the sense that we had a personal doctor who knew our history, would take care of us, fight our corner, and make things happen.

And so we have it: GPs are frustrated, and so, too, are patients. I fear that it’s only going to get worse.