While I understand the concern about GPs capping appointments to 25 patients a day (English hospitals brace for ‘alarming’ disruption as GPs take industrial action, 2 August) NHS chief executive colleagues must appreciate that the entire NHS should not collapse if GPs demand to see what is a safe and reasonable number of patients. Primary care can no longer prop up the rest of the NHS – we are at breaking point.
There needs to be wider recognition of the psychological toll of a GP’s work: 10 minutes to care for a suicidal adolescent, break a cancer diagnosis or support a palliative patient in their final moments. We cannot underestimate the moral injury experienced by GPs from seeing human anguish and distress worsened by a failing system.
We must also acknowledge the numerous other work streams that compose a GP’s day – blood tests, hospital letters, prescriptions, calls from NHS colleagues, staff training and clinical meetings. Archaic IT systems are woefully inadequate and demoralise the workforce further. The final straw is responding to a multitude of complaints about institutional failings that GPs are powerless to change.
Yet the prevailing discourse in the media remains that we are fat-cat, lazy doctors or worse: greedy GP partners who are portrayed as the vermin of the NHS. It is a powerful narrative that allows public anger to be deflected from those in positions of power. The reality is that GPs are leaving the NHS in droves. Despite £20,000 golden hellos to join GP partnerships, rates of partnership have continued to fall.
We must not forget that GPs are seeing more patients since the pandemic and are absorbing 90% of patient interactions in the NHS. This is unsustainable. One doctor takes their own life every three weeks on average. NHS chief executives – descend from your ivory tower, reach for your compassion and create a better NHS for all of us.
Dr Seema Haider
Havering, London
• GPs are an essential part of the health service and have been pressed into action by this derisory budget increase awarded by the last government, which means that more and more practices are struggling to survive. Do we really want to lose more GP practices?
The ballot for industrial action was carried out before the election on 4 July. GP practices have been struggling for years under budgetary and other constraints, and receive a lot of public criticism for things that are outside their control. GPs have been advised by the British Medical Association of a number of ways of taking industrial action that aim to minimise the impact on patients and put the pressure where it belongs – on the government and NHS England.
Practices that decide to limit the number of patient appointments to 25 a day would simply be providing the level of service that is regarded by most European countries as reasonable. Many GPs are working far in excess of this – my own locally is running at about 40% over this, which cannot be regarded as safe.
As a grateful patient of the NHS, I think we need to remember that doctors are doing this for us, not to us.
Yvonne Osman
Newark, Nottinghamshire
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