GP recruitment crisis: a chronic problem in search of a cure
Three years ago, Dr Rob Barnett’s practice in Liverpool needed to recruit two new doctors. They had 50 applications.
Last year, they went through the same process but they had just eight applicants.
Another doctor in London said he could think of 80 surgeries that were “at financial risk”. By that he meant they were either having funding problems, their premises were inadequate or they were having trouble recruiting.
A couple of decades ago, GPs approaching 70 had to be persuaded to retire. Now, the average age of retirement is 59.
All of which is behind the warning from the Royal College of GPs that as many as 543 GP practices in England – and possibly 600 UK-wide – could be forced to close within the next year. There is a crisis, the college says, in recruitment and retention.
At first glance that does seem an extraordinary figure. But the RCGP has based this on the number of practices where 90 per cent of the partners are over the age of 60.
As it happens, a higher proportion of these practices tend to be the smaller ones with lists sizes of about 2,700. So the loss of even one partner causes serious problems. But it was not only small practices and certainly I can think of one surgery where five out of the six partners want to retire by next January.
Being a GP just does not have the allure that it once did. And it is hardly surprising. You only have to go into a GP waiting room to see how busy they are. Indeed, figures show that GP practices now see 370m patients a year – nearly 60m more than five years ago.
They are relentlessly criticised for not giving patients appointments at a moment’s notice, they are blamed for the A&E crisis, and now the Government wants them to open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Earlier in the week, in fact, I was speaking to one doctor whose practice has been given some of the money the Government has put up to encourage longer opening hours, using Skype for consultations, and better use of practice nurses and community teams.
He said it was going very well, with a full roll out due some time this month. But he said that while they had been able to find doctors to run the new Saturday morning surgeries, it had been harder to persuade them to work an extra hour and a half each night so the practice could stay open later.
It seems working 12 hours a day and not getting home in time to put the kids to bed wasn’t particularly appealing.
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