Shropshire Star

Dr Mary McCarthy: PM's comments highly demoralising

Over stretching general practice will not make up for the shortcomings in A&E.

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Last week's announcement by Theresa May demanding GP surgeries stay open seven days a week came as a surprise to many doctors, especially general practitioners. Leading doctors from the BMA have accused her of using GPs as scapegoats for the current crisis we are seeing.

Indeed, the chair of the BMA GP committee, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, said the crisis in A&E had little to do with general practice as there were "seriously ill patients for whom seeing a GP would not prevent a hospital admission". Calling for GPs to open seven days a week, 8am to 8pm, is of little consequence to those needing to be seen in an emergency and will not free up beds. Nine in 10 GP practices already offer extra appointments outside of the 8am–6.30pm time frame, and a recent BMA survey of GPs revealed eight in 10 have found their workload to be unmanageable.

The answer does not lie in overburdening doctors who, in dealing with the increase of millions of appointments, are already stretched to capacity. GPs currently provide a 24-hour, seven-day system through the out-of-hours service. Appointments are made in the evenings, during the night and on weekends, as well as carrying out home visits when the surgery is closed.

Despite the commitment to longer hours from GPs, this seems to have made no difference to the numbers attending A&E.

The fact is there are not enough beds for the population we are dealing with.

For GPs who are routinely working 12-hour days and, despite lack of resources and funding, work their hardest to provide the best possible level of care possible, the PM's statement was highly demoralising.

The Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners said she felt "dismayed" by Theresa May's comments as other medical organisations have called for an apology. The chaos that we see in our A&E departments is a reflection of the chronic underfunding across all of our healthcare including hospitals, social care and general practice.

The NHS can barely keep its head above water let alone have the resources to oversee the improvements it so desperately needs. We have fewer doctors per head and fewer hospital beds than the rest of Europe. Increasing our spending on health to just the average of what the rest of Europe spends on health, would give us a huge increase of funds.

Now more than ever, we need more resources, more doctors, nurses, practices, and beds.

Patient care has suffered enough and the government has the power to stop it.

* Dr Mary McCarthy is chair of the local medical committee and represents Shropshire, North Staffordshire and South Staffordshire on the General Practitioners Committee of the BMA. She has worked at Belvidere Surgery in Shrewsbury for more than 20 years.

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