Tackling the crisis in general practice

The Health Foundation’s report on the Commonwealth Fund’s 2022 international health policy survey of primary care physicians in 10 countries makes for sobering reading.1 Illustrating some worrying trends, its standout findings include rising workloads, higher levels of burnout, and worsening job satisfaction. Strikingly, UK general practitioners score lowest of all countries in terms of satisfaction with the amount of time they spend with patients. Most (71%) find their work extremely or very stressful, with over (35%) of these GPs planning to stop seeing patients regularly in the near future. This level of extreme workplace stress and intention to withdraw poses severe threats to the sustainability of general practice. What solutions exist?Possible solutionsSome answers may lie in the Health Foundation’s report itself. Notably, GPs’ dissatisfaction does not seem, in the main, to relate to income. Instead, it is the increased volume and configuration of GPs’ workload, especially administrative work, that seems…
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