Our reception team have had far higher levels of abuse recently than ever before, and we as GPs have too.
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It’s bled into general practice in ways that have been difficult to manage. We have lots of patients who I know remain incredibly grateful for the care they get – and who clearly recognise the pressure we’re under.īut you can’t hide from the exceptionally toxic narrative created by some sections of the media in the past few months. And of course, what the papers say influences how people think and behave. It can be hard to untangle what you read in the papers from what is happening in reality. Do you feel the public and politicians understand the pressure general practice is under? We’ve had a challenging summer and we’re braced for some very difficult months ahead. There simply aren’t extra GPs available, so it’s difficult to see solutions – at least in the short term. General practice is the front door of the NHS, and we don’t have effective ways of capping our workload. The bottom line is it’s incredibly pressurised. An ageing population is part of it, but right now there’s a difficult mix of managing COVID-19 cases, managing pent-up demand from lockdowns, and the effect of the massive waiting times for routine hospital care that ricochet back to us in general practice.
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That’s driven by a combination of factors. In the meantime, demand for care continues to rise. The number of GPs in training is rising, but this is still being outstripped by those leaving the profession. It certainly seems far more precarious now than it has done at any point in the last decade.įor years there’s been a fundamental mismatch between demand and supply in general practice. How severe are the pressures facing general practice right now?