Kate Woodhead RGN DMS provides an insight into the latest reports on the state of Primary Care and the proposed solutions to the pressures facing GPs.
General practice is the foundation of care in the United Kingdom’s healthcare system and is the envy of the world. Ninety percent of all patient contacts occur in Primary Care and it is suffering a deep crisis. We should all be concerned and cognisant of its issues and yet the demand for services is growing exponentially. There are a number of authoritative reports which have been recently published which, as citizens and potential patients, we should know about and, as healthcare professionals, we should be proactively understanding and supporting local GPs and their teams.
Sir Bruce Keogh discussed his views on the role of general practitioners recently1, paying tribute to the skills of the workforce. “Both general practitioners and their associated staff are having to deal with tricky issues of increasing demand and rising expectations, and in particular in the face of increasing complexity of the patient workload that they have to see.
“In my view, it is a really hard job. They have to be clinically, intellectually and emotionally strong. I can say this as a cardiac surgeon, where all our patients come to us kind of worked up. [ … ] But day in, day out, general practitioners are having to sort out the wheat from the chaff, to identify major clinical problems masquerading as minor ailments, and it is utterly relentless.
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