Selfishness of my fellow NHS GPs beggars belief, says DR MARTIN SCURR

The selfishness of my fellow GPs who threaten to strike beggars belief, writes DR MARTIN SCURR

GPs are playing a dangerous game. As the Mail reported yesterday, almost a third of family doctors are willing to shut their doors for a week, in a shameless bid to blackmail the Government into increasing their funding.

More than half would consider closing for a day and telling patients to go to A&E or call the 111 NHS hotline instead, according to the poll carried out last month by the doctors’ magazine Pulse. What’s more, 46 per cent agreed they might hand in undated letters of resignation.

Frankly, these are shameful avowals. Many GPs have become so arrogant, and the service they offer so diminished, that they don’t realise how well off they really are.

If they carried out their threat and withdrew their services altogether, they might find that the privileges they’ve enjoyed for 75 years, since the inception of the NHS, could be withdrawn. Their comfortable double status, as private sub-contractors within the state health service could, deservedly, come to an end.

Almost a third of family doctors are willing to shut their doors for a week, in a shameless bid to blackmail the Government into increasing their funding

Privileges

Their pay, hours, conditions and options for earning extra income are generous, especially in comparison to the privations suffered by most working people and pensioners over the past year.

And even though I’ve benefited myself from those privileges throughout a long career in general practice, I’d welcome a shake-up. The country cannot go on being held to ransom by militant factions within the NHS.

In the decades since I qualified, the demands on GPs have become far less arduous. GPs no longer make endless home visits, work late into the evening, or face being called out in the small hours.

Few surgeries offer even a limited service at weekends. And many popular treatments have been withdrawn over the years: most GPs no longer offer to clear patients’ ears of earwax, for instance.

Meanwhile, the waiting time for appointments has stretched from days to weeks. Instead of being able to see a doctor within a few hours or even days when an urgent problem crops up, patients are left with a choice of enduring an agonising delay, going to A&E, or simply ignoring the problem and hoping it gets better on its own. This is the dispiriting context behind the GPs’ inflated pay demands.

And, of course, it’s not just GPs. Too much suffering has been caused to patients by eight months of industrial action by workers across the NHS: wave after wave of junior doctors, nurses, consultants and others, with GPs the latest to issue threats ‘in solidarity’ with the strikers.

More than half would consider closing for a day and telling patients to go to A&E or call the 111 NHS hotline instead

Last week, specialists and hospital-based dentists staged a 48-hour walkout that ended on Saturday morning.

During that time, consultants offered what they called ‘Christmas Day cover’: all appointments were cancelled and only life-or-death emergencies were treated.

This followed disruption by junior doctors, during which 106,000 hospital appointments were ‘disrupted’ — that is, postponed or axed — over three days. The British Medical Association (BMA) regarded this such a ‘success’ that a further five-day strike is now planned.

READ MORE: Leading militant member of union behind doctor’s strike sets up website… to encourage doctors to quit the NHS

From today, the Society of Radiographers joins the rolling strikes, staging 48-hour walk-outs at 40 trusts around the country. Many thousands of scans will be cancelled, meaning that countless cases of serious illness such as cancer and heart disease will take longer to diagnose, with treatment delayed in consequence.

It is an inevitability that people will die if GPs withdraw their labour — whatever the strikers may claim. Some patients who receive a dismissive text message suggesting they call 111 might have a problem demanding urgent treatment such as a heart attack or sepsis.

I’m convinced that most GPs fear for the welfare of their patients during strikes, and many oppose industrial action but feel afraid to speak out against the militants.

But when the NHS is on the brink of breakdown, the selfishness of GPs who threaten to join the strikes beggars belief.

The average salary for a GP last year was between £65,070 and £98,194, with the option of topping up their income or reducing their hours as it suited them.

Many people don’t appreciate what a cushy deal GPs have always enjoyed. When the NHS was launched in 1948, it faced angry opposition from old-fashioned family doctors who feared becoming glorified civil servants.

They were unwilling to give up the freedom of their lucrative self-employed status, and pointed out that their duties often required them to work around the clock — doing late-night home visits, treating the sick on weekends as well as weekdays and so on.

Lucrative

Recognising that a health service without doctors was no service at all, Labour’s minister of health Nye Bevan — the driving force behind the NHS — agreed that the GPs could keep their unique independent status. As Bevan infamously put it, he ‘stuffed their mouths with gold’ to silence their complaints.

READ MORE: Defiant doctors pledge to continue strikes with five-day walkout from all services set for Thursday

Today, at around 7,000 GP practices across Britain, roughly 35,000 GP partners still enjoy that status as independent sub-contractors, albeit working for an employer, which more or less operates as a monopoly. About 90 per cent of GP income is from the NHS, although they can also work as advisers to private companies, as well as providing reports to insurance firms for lucrative fees.

They also have the luxury of setting their own hours — working a three-day week, for example, when that suits the demands of family life.

Perhaps the most financially rewarding source of extra cash comes from locum work. Barely a day goes by when I am not offered up to £1,000 a day to work a 12-hour shift at a surgery, slogging through a backlog of prescriptions and routine examinations.

That work isn’t appealing to me, but I know of at least one former GP who has quit her surgery altogether to work as a full-time locum. And for others, it is an invaluable option when extra income is needed, for instance, to pay for a wedding or a new car.

Consequences

Despite being in my 70s, I am strongly considering going back to general practice in the NHS — though, absurdly, the training to do so, despite my decades of experience, could take up to a year following a long spell in private practice.

It is an inevitability that people will die if GPs withdraw their labour — whatever the strikers may claim (File image)

Like many doctors of my generation, I always saw my work as being rooted in the duty to look after patients. Which is why I find the endless strikes so unconscionable.

If GPs carry out their threat, they will lose the last vestiges of public sympathy and respect. They don’t appear to care about that — but they will care if they also lose their coveted independent status.

Where surgeries face closure, as GPs retire or move away, it is increasingly common for hospital trusts to take over the business and run it directly, with doctors simply becoming salaried employees.

The Government has the option of extending that policy. I believe it should.

For three-quarters of a century, GPs have enjoyed remarkable privileges — but if they abuse their freedoms, they must face the consequences.