Chronic GP shortage putting millions of patients at risk, top doctor warns

GPs can no longer guarantee safe care for millions of patients because of a dangerous shortage of medics, Britain's top family doctor has warned.

- Andrew Gregory Health editor

Prof Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), said surgeries were desperate to hire more doctors to meet soaring demand for care but could not afford to do so because of a lack of core funding.

Exhausted family doctors were working "completely unsafe hours" because their surgeries did not have the cash to recruit new staff or replace those quitting, increasing the risk of serious errors or deadly conditions being missed, she said.

"GPs will always push themselves to do what's best for our patients, but we can't go on like this," Hawthorne said. "GP workload pressures are so pronounced that many of our members are telling us they are worried they can't guarantee safe care when there aren't enough GPs to keep up."

Decades of chronic underfunding had left general practice on the brink, with fewer family doctors unable to cope with record demand and an ageing population with increasingly complex conditions, Hawthorne said. The result was "unsustainable workloads" with patient safety "compromised".

She raised the alarm in an interview with the Guardian as more than 8,000 GPs signed a letter to the health secretary, Wes Streeting, urging him to take action to train, recruit and retain more doctors and restore patient safety.

A fully qualified full-time GP in England was now responsible for 2,241 patients on average, a rise of 304 patients each (16%) in 10 years, Hawthorne said.