There has to come a point where doctors decide, I can’t do my job any more – and then the situation will spiral out of control. I would use the term ‘crisis’: so many parts of the NHS are under such enormous pressure that they are unable to provide the personal care that patients need, unable to provide effective care, and increasingly unable to even provide safe care.
In a speech to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Royal College of General Practitioners reported in the Observer, its outgoing president Martin Marshall was blunt about the state of his profession. His fears for GPs’ futures were echoed across the media throughout the winter of 2022, amid warnings of a “tsunami of demand” from the public. In January, a member of the GP Survival network wrote that the pressures had got too much:
