GP numbers in England down every year since 2015 pledge to raise them

[Northerner]

The number of GPs in England has fallen every year since the government first pledged to increase the family doctor workforce by 5,000, a minister has admitted.

There were 29,364 full-time-equivalent GPs in post in September 2015, when the then health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, first promised to increase the total by 5,000 by 2020.

However, by September 2020 the number of family doctors had dropped to 27,939, a fall of 1,425, the health minister Maria Caulfield disclosed in a parliamentary answer. And it has fallen even further since then, to 27,920, she confirmed, citing NHS workforce data.

In the 2019 general election campaign, Boris Johnson replaced Hunt’s pledge with a new commitment to increase the number of GPs in England by 6,000 by 2024. However, Sajid Javid, the health secretary, admitted last November that this pledge was unlikely to be met because so many family doctors were retiring early.

GP numbers in England down every year since 2015 pledge to raise them

Exclusive: total number of doctors now about 1,500 less than in the year Jeremy Hunt promised a rise of 5,000 by 2020

www.theguardian.com

 

[mikeyB]

This is a problem that could have been predicted, for the simple reason for the lack of GPs is the lack of GPs in training. It takes at least 9years to fully train up a GP, which is what I did. The time to take the decision to be a GP is taken 3 years before the training begins - that’s how long it takes, including 6 month jobs in Paediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Psychiatry, plus sitting with a GP Trainer in surgeries. That’s when you learn about childhood rashes., hardly ever seen in hospital. And I saw my first (and last) patient with leprosy while a trainee.

And they always say that you learn more after your education has finished, because you see far more conditions than ever get referred to hospital specialists. Then you call yourself a General Practitioner.

 

[Abi]

I regularly dip into a doctors forum. Many older generation GPs preferred work pre 2004 to now despite 24/7 responsibility ( although often out of hours work was covered by co operatives which was less onerous) . A dysfunctional health service with crisis in secondary care, ambulance service and social care is not helping. And the idea that anything that others cannot be *rsed to deal with is the GP's problem. Oh and the Mail, Telegraph etc etc and social media. Being expected to work longer hours is manageable if this is spent on meaningful tasks and there is adequate time to perform these, and work can be delegated efficiently once you have achieved what is achievable by your skill set rather than wasting vast amounts of time on phone calls and trying to deal with obstructive jobs worths- or finding that the person or service you need has now disappeared as it is after 5 and you are still trying to clear the decks after 6:30. About the time I was given a pay rise last year I experienced a surge in stress levels and would rather the pay rise was spent on paying others to stay on later to help when on call..

 

[trophywench]

But whyever would they think to ask the likes of you what's needed to make things better Abi - good God woman, get real, how the hell would you know the slightest thing about what GPs need!! You are only a GP after all and NOT!! a non medically qualified expert consultant.........

Your very first mistake is imagining the Government would even want the NHS .

 

[Abi]

I do not think they actively want to get rid of the NHS. They are just too thick and useless to know how to run a service or who to delegate this to. We need a huge debate about responsibilities of both patients and clinicians and what the service can provide. Defunding social services / not planning in advance how to care for our burgeoning elderly demographic is a major issue with " bed blocking" ambulance and surgery / procedure delays. Encouraging vexatious complaints and a medieval sense of justice when a junior makes honest mistakes do not help and actually mean serious complains are either scapegoated upon one unfortunate or shoved under the carpet for years. Litigation is astronomical. In some cases compensation sums are disproportionate and I would assume in other cases people do not get enough ( or any) and in most instances probably too much lands in the hands of lawyers and the courts. Need to train certain members of the public what consitutes a medical problem and what is an emergency vs something which can wait, and ensure the quietly vulnerable and needy do not get shoved aside when dealing with the more vocal