What can be done to solve the GP recruitment crisis?

The constant criticism of GPs in the media does us no favours. The public and the NHS need, and deserve, more GPs and the perpetual GP bashing needs to stop immediately if we are to avoid a severe shortage in the very near future.

There is also a misconception about what general practice is about and what GPs actually do. It needs to be promoted as a positive career choice rather than a ‘back-up’ if nothing else works out.

Even with greater efforts around recruitment, this will only offer a long-term solution – especially with plans to extend GP training to four years.

Dr Krishna Kasaraneni, chair of the GPC trainees subcommittee

‘Remove barriers for returners’

We put up huge barriers to people who we have trained at great taxpayer expense and we positively prohibit these doctors from picking up their careers again in UK general practice.

I query the appropriateness of these routes onto the performers’ list. What we’re proposing is to work with others, to agree a set of principles around safe, proportionate return to general practice.

Someone who has been working in general practice in, say, Australia for three years has needs in terms of supported return that are likely to be very different from someone who has been out of practice completely for eight or nine years.

We could potentially have a short-term surge in the general practice workforce just by getting the best out of the potential for returners.

Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the RCGP

‘Fix the leaky bucket’

The evidence shows we’re training more GPs but many are choosing to work part-time because of the issues of burnout, many are going abroad and practices are finding it very difficult to forward-plan because funding is so uncertain. It’s a perfect storm for a recruitment and retention crisis.

We need to focus on the ‘leaky bucket’ – there is no point pouring more in at the top when so much is seeping out of the bottom. Many GPs are considering retiring early or working part-time in order to cope with stress.

We need a national workforce solution. At the moment the policy is to devolve workforce planning right down to the [local education training boards] and local priorities – but since that national resource structure has been subsumed within local budgets, funding is only happening in a piecemeal fashion.

Readers' comments (30)

Anonymous03 Feb 2014 1:24pm

I completely agree with Dr McCarron-Nash. I have the capacity to work more but not under the current system, i feel i would burn out! Am currently planning my exit strategy. If working in General Practice improved then i think we would have many GPs happy to increase their working hours and less of a need to train larger numbers of GPs. Its not rocket science to acknowledge this situation is the same for many .........but no-one seems to be listening!

Senior partner announced retirement 2 years early ( stress and work load) next oldest has just cut his hours ( same reason)Leaves only 2 full timers one who has just informed me he has asked accountants to look at reducing hours for himI will follow ... It is now virtually insanity to work9 clinical shifts with all the stress and work load.What's the point of heading to an early grave.

1. increase costs of being a doctor (fees / living expenses) to say £250,000 real term debt2. increase length of training to say 4 years3. increase age to retirement to say 704. increase pension contributions to say 15%5. have a real term cut in income by 10-20%6. force gps into 24hr day 7 day a week (coming soon) responsibility / blame for patient care7. show no compassion to ill drs8. bully female gps to make them feel guilty for going part time or wanting families9. allow GMC to bully doctors who are guilty until proven innocent10. have a union and college which does 'jack for you' at a hefty cost11. make the job as risky as possible 12. increase yearly costs of being a gp (MDU, GMC fees)13. get the blame for everything in society 14. stop those who actually want to be GPs (imgs) by having an unfair examination process.15. force those that want to do hospital medicine into GPVTS.16. transfer the whole service to federation and salaried posts (coming soon) thereby destroying the whole point of being a GP and in short destroying the profession.17. do nothing to tackle demand

Anonymous 10.37am has it in a nutshell.Although it has to be a coconut shell to contain all of the negative forces against GPs at the moment.Still, it is all part of the long game to get rid of the traditional GP so that the private companies can come in and take what they want.The government [for some reason] does not worry about how horribly expensive a reduced service will be simply because the service which [strangely] still runs on goodwill, will no longer be able to call on that.