With family doctors under serious pressure, a senior Gateshead GP has spoken of how the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath has left her burnt out - and said the 10-minute GP's appointment is "not fit for purpose".
Dr Dawn Turner, a GP at the Bridges Medical Practice in Gateshead also plays a leading role in managing older people's health for the Newcastle Gateshead NHS CCG. She told ChronicleLive how rising demand - in particular when it comes to mental health and older people with complex needs - was leaving doctors struggling and considering the future.
Dr Turner - who has worked at the practice since 2005 - said: "On average I'm doing 10-hour days. It's hard and I'm in the process of reducing my hours. I'm really quite burnt out. The bottom line is we need more people.
"And the biggest thing is we need longer appointments. The ten minute appointment is not fit for purpose. We need longer. With an older population and more people with multiple long-term conditions - this can be really complex stuff.
"There are sometimes where I do just dread the thought of coming to work. It can feel overwhelming. We know if we had more time with people we could sort them out better and reduce the need for them to keep coming back. But because we don't have enough time, you never quite feel like you've been able to solve everything for someone."
Though she said initiatives such as doing "annual care reviews" for patients had helped, she said it was the UK's ageing population meant people's health issues were becoming more and more complex. She said "It's trying to differentiate for various medical conditions - that's when ten minutes is never going to be adequate."
Speaking of how the pandemic has seen a rise in mental health concerns and people presenting with other issues later than they otherwise would have, Dr Turner added: "In an area like this one in Gateshead you do see an awful lot of mental health problems. Partly because it's still a very deprived area - so we see people struggling with a lot of social issues and we always have done. But we have definitely seen an increase.
"During Covid and the lockdowns, that's been exacerbated by that lack of access to services and also just to general community support."
As a GP with a specialist interest in older people's health, she said the pandemic's impact mental health and diagnoses of dementia, for example, had been stark. "We are seeing a lot of older people with more memory problems than perhaps we'd have seen before. Much of the time when people present with memory problems it's because family members have noticed it. So there are people we're seeing now who perhaps hadn't seen family for much of the pandemic - and the pandemic has had a real impact on their health and lives. It can be really distressing."
This spring a new campaign - Rebuild GP - has called for the Government to address the rising pressures on the workload of GPs like Dr Turner. Calling for the Government to boost GP recruitment, tackle burnout, and reduce GP workload, the campaign has highlighted how 91% of GPs in the North East don't believe they have "adequate time" with a patient to safely diagnose them.
In response, the Government has reiterated it is committed to increasing the number of people working in general practice. A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson has said the number of GPs has increased by more than 1,600 over the past two years.
They added: "Through the GP access plan, we have made £520 million available to improve access and expand general practice capacity during the pandemic. This is in addition to £1.5 billion announced in 2020 to create an additional 50 million general practice appointments by 2024 by increasing and diversifying the workforce."
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