Last week, I went to Gloucester to see a doctor. I was armed with headlines that placed the city and its surrounding county at the sharpest end of the current crisis in general practice. More than 30,000 patients in Gloucestershire had to wait more than a month for a GP appointment in September, a figure that had doubled in a year. Meanwhile, since the pandemic, doctors and nurses and reception staff have been leaving jobs and partnerships in unprecedented numbers. (There is a current shortfall of at least 4,200 GPs across England, with notable gaps in the south-west.)
Dr Bob Hodges, a veteran of the frontline of primary care, had invited me to his Gloucester practice to witness the more complicated reality behind those headlines. Hodges is a big, gentle man with an easy smile, one of nine partners at the Aspen medical practice near the centre of the city, and vice-chair of the local medical committee that represents the county’s GPs. He wears hospital scrubs because he doubles as a subspecialist in dermatology doing minor operations. He gets in early. “Either it’s paperwork before patients or vice versa,” he says, “and we have a late clinic until 8pm so usually I’m too knackered to do the admin after the last patient.”
