West Midlands GPs come together in peaceful demonstration against 'crisis in general practice'

Express & Star

GPs and patients from across the West Midlands joined a peaceful demonstration in a bid to end the 'crisis in general practice'. The peaceful demonstration - taking place in Birmingham city centre - was attended by GPs from Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, North and South Staffordshire, Sandwell, Shropshire, Telford, Solihull, Walsall, Warwickshire, Wolverhampton, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire.

Transcript

00:00 So my name is Dr. Agarwal, I'm a GP based in Gannett. I'm also chair of South Staffordshire

00:05 LMC and secretary of West Midlands group of LMC's. So as you can see we've organised this

00:10 peaceful demonstration today of GPs from all across West Midlands who are here in their own time

00:15 trying to highlight the reasons why general practice is in a crisis and why patients cannot

00:20 get an appointment. So as I've said before we have lost 2,000 GPs since 2015. We have lost 1,300

00:28 practices and the government are not allowing us to use 1.4 billion pounds of their allocated staff

00:34 funding to recruit GPs and nurses. What patients are asking for is GP appointments, what we want

00:39 to give them is GP appointments but the government are not allowing us to use the funding. We are

00:44 using this opportunity to actually speak to the government and ask them to work with us,

00:48 work with the profession for us to be able to provide the services we want for our patients

00:56 and make general practice a priority in the next coming in the coming general election.

01:00 So the most pressing issue is utilisation of that 1.4 billion by individual practices to recruit the

01:08 staff that they need including GPs and nurses but also about fair funding of general practice. We

01:12 have seen 20% reduction in pay to general practice since 2015. We only get 30 pence per patient per

01:20 day to provide all the care that the patients need and that is not sustainable and that is why we are

01:25 struggling.

01:27 Today is all about trying to raise awareness of the issues facing GPs. The press tends to be

01:42 full of stories especially recently around troubles people have getting access to GPs,

01:50 struggling to get GP appointments and I don't think people really understand the pressure

01:56 that general practice is under. We're the most flexible part, most innovative part

02:01 of the health service and we run for very very little money. We're so efficient and that story

02:09 never gets told so really we've been squeezed so hard. We've been squeezed until the pips squeak

02:16 and this is us squeaking saying help trying to raise awareness of the issues we we face.

02:21 So the most important issue that needs to be solved and probably the easiest one is for a

02:28 realistic conversation to be had between the government, between NHS England and patients to

02:36 try and recalibrate expectations. Almost every article you read, almost every advert, almost

02:44 every soundbite from a politician involving health will end with the caveat at the end 'if

02:50 you need more help please discuss this with your GP' and the trouble is that would be fine if we

02:56 had time and if we had capacity but the capacity is just no longer there. I think the real challenge

03:02 we have is our patients want to see us and we want to see them but trying to book an appointment

03:10 with us can be really difficult and often people complain that there aren't enough appointments.

03:17 There are appointments there and a lot of the appointments are taken up with things that don't

03:21 necessarily need a GP and I think it's really difficult. The way we seem to be going is that

03:31 GPs are triaging more and more patients and GPs are being left with more complex and complicated

03:42 clinical scenarios which then makes it really difficult to do the job well and difficult

03:51 to build up those relationships. Just in terms of pay, are you paid fairly?

03:59 As far as general practice pay, general practice remuneration, it's a very complex issue and I

04:04 think it's really difficult because GPs can earn a reasonable wage if they are fortunate

04:15 and if they are incredibly well organised but the struggle in order to make that happen

04:19 is really very difficult and the amount of hours that GPs work, I don't think people understand,

04:28 uh 55 hours is pretty standard for someone working full-time in my practice which as a

04:34 father of two young children trying to balance that is a recipe for burnout, it's really challenging.

04:42 Most people when I ask them how much do you think I get paid to look after you for a year

04:46 and people often think it's in the thousands. It's more expensive to insure your dog for a month

04:55 than we get paid and I think that's really important thing for people to understand.

05:02 Money has to be part of the solution and I think making sure that regulation is done

05:11 in the informed light type of way. My name is Dr. Chandra Kanaganti, I'm a GP for the past 18 years

05:18 and I'm a GP from Stoke-on-Trent representing all GPs from North Staffordshire. Yeah we're here today

05:24 to show and tell people that you know there's a big crisis in general practice that's happening.

05:29 We have much more fever GPs than what we have in 2015 and we have more patients for GP as well so

05:36 there's an extreme pressure in general practice workload. We are seeing more patients than ever

05:42 before, we're seeing more patients than pre-COVID period but the resources that come in general

05:46 practice is very limited. We only have something like two percent increase year on year for the

05:51 last five years when our expense has gone up up to 10 to 15 percent as per inflation. What we need

05:58 is that proper funded general practice to support our patients better and provide best care for our

06:04 patients. There is money there, almost 24 pound per patient is going to recruit something called

06:10 ARRS roles but we cannot use that money to recruit GPs and nurses that are required for our practices

06:18 and that's what we're asking the government to look at to make sure that the funding is better

06:24 for our practices and make sure that we are allowed to have some independence to spend money

06:29 that can be useful for practices and for our patients. And let's say you know if I could wave

06:35 a magic wand and there was the most pressing thing needs to be changed right now today,

06:39 what's the first thing that needs to happen? Stop leaking GPs, we are losing loads of GPs actually

06:45 leaving to other countries you know. Let's make them stop leaving by supporting the core. The

06:52 core general practice need to be funded then we will see that the GPs not leaving the country

06:58 and we'll be able to recruit more GPs as well. So let's what do you call restore the core. The core

07:05 general practice funding is not been restored for the past few years and if you restore the core GP

07:10 funding we will be having the traditional general practice which patients love and will continue to

07:16 provide the excellent care that we want to provide to patients.

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