A Blairgowrie doctor and leader of Scotland’s GPs made a searing conference speech highlighting the need for action to stop “the slow death of general practice as we know it”.
He claimed doctors in the community were at a “tipping point.”
BMA Scottish GPs committee chair Andrew Buist from Blairgowrie was speaking on December 2 at the Scottish Local Medical Committees Conference 2022.
He called on the Scottish Government to act quickly to prevent more practices collapsing and to make general practice an attractive career again.
Dr Buist admitted that he himself could no longer immediately say yes to recommending general practice as a career.
In a despairing speech to the conference of Scottish local medical committees in Clydebank, Dr Buist said a recent wellbeing survey of more than 1000 General Practice doctors in Scotland painted a grim picture.
Three quarters said the past year made them more likely to take early retirement or leave the profession.
The same proportion said excessive workload made them more likely to reduce hours, and just 18 per cent would recommend general practice as a career.
The GP explained these were dangerous attitudes: “I have been a GP for 30 years – I am proud to call myself a GP, it is a job with huge potential for job satisfaction in helping patients in sickness and to live well – but we are at a tipping point for general practice.
“In recent years the sheer volume of workload in excess of our capacity has made the job unbearable at times.
“Being a GP has been, is, and can continue to be, a hugely rewarding career choice but we need a new vision for primary care with sufficient GPs with the time and the back-up of a full multidisciplinary team, to allow GPs to focus on being expert medical generalists.”
“The most worrying finding [of the survey] was that only 18 per cent of the GPs responding said they would recommend a career in general practice, 18 percent!
“And I confess to you now, that last year I said ‘yes’, and this year changed to a ‘maybe’.
“I say to the Scottish Government: how can you not see there is something seriously wrong going on here? If this statistic doesn’t tell you that the service is in a terminal decline – what will?
“My huge fear is that as a nation we are sleepwalking into the death of general practice as we have known it.
“The public will not like what replaces it, to say nothing of the potential impact on the public purse.”
In summary he said the issue was excessive workload weighing on too few personnel.
“Three weeks ago we launched our safe workload guidance for practices, and we encourage all practices to consider this in the context of their workload situation.
“At the heart of this must be making working as a GP not just bearable again, but about getting the joy and professional satisfaction back into the job.”
He added that a “hospital dependant-community light” model of healthcare was developing that “does not meet the needs of the people of Scotland.”
In a call for an end to “sleep-walking” Perthshire -based Dr Buist of Ardblair Medical Practice said: “I desperately want to be able to recommend being a GP – as I am sure you all do too.
“We need a renewed vision for our NHS which guides us to a more positive future. So I fully support the call from BMA Scotland for a cross-party national debate with the public and key stakeholders on the future of healthcare in this country.”
