Maureen Bakers response to J. Meirion Thomas comments in the Daily Mail on Wednesday: Professor J. Meirion Thomas’ outlandish comments in the Daily Mail on Wednesday will have set the blood boiling of hard-working GPs across the country who will see over 1.2m patients today alone. As a surgeon and fellow healthcare professional, Meirion Thomas should – especially on a day when surgeons are under scrutiny in the media – understand the damage that this kind of negative coverage has on morale and the trust that our patients have in us. Whatever his personal views on GPs – misplaced, elitist, and archaic as they are – I’m incredibly proud to lead a College of 50,000 healthcare professionals who are consistently rated as the most trustworthy in the NHS, by those who matter most; our patients. Certainly NHS England do not agree with him and in their recent Five Year Forward View recognised the importance of general practice for our health service and the urgent need to invest in our service. The NHS is envied across the globe – the Commonwealth Fund recently named our NHS the world’s best - and what is different about our health service than that of other countries? It is free at the point of need to anyone who needs it, and this is made possible by the cost-effectiveness of general practice and the hard work and dedication of GPs and practice staff. GPs are the gatekeepers to our health service – we keep the pressure off our colleagues in A&E, our patients out of hospital, and the NHS good value for money. GPs are now making 340m patient consultations every year – 40m more than five years ago – the equivalent 90% of all NHS patient contacts, yet our profession only receives 8.3% of the overall NHS budget. Perhaps Meirion Thomas does not understand the complexities involved in treating an increasing number of patients with multiple, ongoing conditions, both physical and mental. I stand by my comments that if current funding trends continue, general practice as we know it does face extinction. But the RCGP is not calling for more money to line GPs’ pockets and I vehemently dispute Meirion Thomas’ claim that I have ever, in my time as Chair, demanded a pay rise for GPs. The money we are calling for will be ploughed into providing more and better services for our patients, close to home, where they want and need it most. We have a chronic shortage of GPs across the country – we need at least 8000 more in England alone by the end of the next government - and where Meirion Thomas is right, is questioning where these will come from. Training a GP takes time – we are highly skilled doctors, after all – and we need to be looking into how to boost our depleting workforce now, for example, by making it easier for trained GPs to return to work after a career break. What’s more, now is the best time that there has ever been to enter general practice. It is an exciting, diverse profession and – despite his claim that we are ‘not trained or equipped for highly specialised medical work’ – we are carrying out treatments in our consulting rooms, that just a decade ago would have been instantly referred to hospitals. We are all under pressure across the health service. Now is the time to be pulling together and supporting our patients and each other. Shame on Meirion Thomas for not doing so.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 11:07:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015