Overstretched U.K. Family Doctors Facing ‘Unsustainable’ Demand

Healthcare Overstretched U. K. Family Doctors Facing ‘Unsustainable’ Demand Katherine Hignett Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

I write about U. K. health policy.

New! Follow this author to improve your content experience. Got it! Jul 30, 2022, 06:53pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin People sit in doctor’s waiting room. One woman looks a medical brochure and a man uses his smart .

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getty U. K. family doctors are delivering more appointments, even as the workforce shrinks in what the an industry body warns is an ‘unsustainable’ situation.

In June, Britain’s GPs held 26 million appointments: an increase of 10% on the same month in 2019, the year before the pandemic. The number of patients registered with GP practices is also rising. Yet the number of family doctors continues to fall, having dropped by 2% over the last year.

According to the Royal College of General Practitioners, the country has 1,500 fewer qualified GPs than it had 5 years ago. Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said : “The result is a chronically over-stretched and under-resourced general practice service, with GPs and their teams working to their absolute limits to deliver increasingly complex care to the ever-rising number of patients that need it. ” This level of intensity was “unsustainable” and “unsafe” for both staff and patients, he continued.

And it was leading GPs to quit, further exacerbating pressures on the workforce. “An exhausted GP is not able to practice safely or deliver the high-quality care and services they are trained and want to deliver for patients. This is leading to GPs and other members of our teams burning out and having to evaluate their futures working in general practice, in some cases leaving the profession earlier than planned and in others reducing contracted working hours to make the job more sustainable”.

A Royal College survey recently indicated that nearly 19,000 GPs could leave the profession over the next five years, with stress and long hours driving disatisfaction. Marshall said the college was calling on government to “address the spiralling workforce. ” MORE FOR YOU CDC: Salmonella Outbreak Has Left 279 Ill, 26 Hospitalized In 29 States Canadians End Up In ICU After Attending ‘Covid Party’ White House Mandates Pfizer Vaccines for Millions of Citizens .

. . Before the FDA Clinical or Safety Reviews Have Been Made Public He said: “We are calling for urgent action to develop and implement a new recruitment and retention strategy that allows us to achieve and go beyond the target of 6,000 more GPs.

We also need to see funding for general practice return to 11% of the total health spend and a reduction in unnecessary bureaucracy to free up GP’s time to deliver patient care. ” Health service industry body NHS Confederation echoed similar concerns. Ruth Rankine, director of primary care at the NHS Confederation, said: “Despite increases in the numbers of staff in other primary care professions, further investment in training, recruiting, and retaining more GPs is urgently needed as part of a broader long-term plan for expanding the NHS workforce.

” The organisation said short staffing in the health service — in primary care and other areas — should be a key concern for the country’s next prime minister. Rankine added the new PM must work with government to “set out a workforce plan to address this. ” Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn .

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