Britain’s struggling GP service has failed to recover from the effects of Covid

SIR – Georgina Stanger (Letters, February 11) says that the King’s cancer diagnosis “throws the parlous state of the NHS into stark relief ”, and I can only agree.

Pre-Covid, our village had a doctor’s practice staffed by one doctor, who was supported by several nurses and receptionists. One could ring up in the morning and usually get an appointment with the doctor the same day. Sadly, he retired, so we had to transfer to another surgery further away. This practice lists at least 10 doctors, supported by various healthcare assistants, yet, post-Covid, we find it difficult to get an appointment without a wait of three weeks or more (report, February 16). Why is this? Jill Smith Stalbridge, Dorset

SIR – I am glad to say that your headline, “Four-week waits for GP appointments at record high” (report, February 16), does not match up with my experience. Where I live there is no waiting time, and we often get a face-to-face appointment with our chosen GP the same day.

If we call reception on a weekday morning, we are put on a waiting list and receive a reply about 20 minutes later; we then ask for an appointment. If we think a conversation with the GP is sufficient, we receive a call in the evening.

As my wife and I are both very old, we have to see a GP fairly often for various complaints and every time our experience is the same. Perhaps we are just lucky. Colin Dawson Canterbury, Kent

SIR – The oncologist Professor Karol Sikora rightly congratulated King Charles for speaking out about his cancer (Comment, February 6) and said that he hoped it would lead others to seek early treatment. However, in his review of the book Why Can’t I See

My GP? (January 27), Professor Sikora also stated that: “The key problem for

GPs is that the demand for appointments far outstrips their supply.”

As a recent patient of two different surgeries in the Aylesbury area, my experience is that there is no shortage of GPs, just a shortage of GP-days worked. One surgery had 16 doctors on the register, but none worked full time and most worked three days a week. The other surgery had only five doctors, but again, most worked a three-day week.

If this situation is typical, surely the excess demand for GPs could be solved by encouraging them away from part-time working. Given the tremendous time and cost expended in training them on behalf of the taxpayer, surely it is not unreasonable to ask them to work more days to pay back this investment.

Perhaps it is time to change GP contracts to reflect this requirement or, like our Armed Forces, introduce minimum fixed-term contracts with buy-out options if an individual wants to leave or work reduced hours. Graham Kemp Haddenham, Buckinghamshire

SIR – The possibility of there being a urine test for ovarian cancer (report, February 11) is excellent news. More than 7,000 cases are detected each year across the United Kingdom, but many women are still being diagnosed too late.

We already have a good screen for this cancer by means of a simple blood test for cancer antigen (CA) 125 in women over the age of 50. In addition, the results from the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening, which took place between April 2001 and September 2005, and involved more than 200,000 women, are still being published.

We know that annual CA 125 testing improves the detection of early stage ovarian cancers. Bizarrely, however, although the NHS recommends it for women attending their GP with symptoms such as bladder problems and tummy discomfort, there is little encouragement to offer it to asymptomatic women. This means that whether an individual gets screened can depend entirely on their GP.

This is no way to run an early detection service for a life-threatening condition. We need to do better. Dr Nick Summerton Welton, East Yorkshire