According to the recent RACGP's “General Practice: Health of the Nation 2022″ report, one quarter of all GPs plan to retire within the next five years, and only half of all current GPs intend to still be practising in 10 years time. This is spine-chilling stuff.
General practice is significantly understaffed, underfunded, and overworked and this is impacting on the care and services we're able to deliver to patients. 'The intensity and complexity of our workload is escalating whilst numbers of fully qualified, full-time GPs are falling.
Almost 19 000 GPs will leave in next five years without urgent action, RCGP warns. General practice will lose around 18 950 GPs and trainees over the next five years unless steps are taken to tackle intense workload and workforce pressures, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has warned.
The exodus could be attributed to a combination of fatigue, burnout and not enough junior doctors coming through to replace those leaving, she said.
The report from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) found the national shortage of GPs in 2020 was 860, but if nothing is done to attract or retain the workforce, the number could blow out to around 10,600 by 2031-32.
With less experience in general practice, and almost no experience of seeing GPs in high-profile positions, it is easy to think the profession lacks these opportunities, appearing to be lacking in prestige. Thus GP recruitment has become a vicious circle.
Number of NHS GPs by role (FTE) - fully qualified GPs only
Over the last year, the NHS has lost 323 individual (headcount) GP partners and 335 salaried, locum and retainer GPs. This has created a net loss of 658 individual GPs since November 2021.
Some felt that in general practice they would not be able to use their specialist skills and feared becoming deskilled in clinical areas such as the interpretation of x-rays. Others were concerned about the relative isolation in terms of medical responsibility, compared to working in teams in hospital.
GPs are facing potential stressors from all sides, with some finding little professional support within their practices. The researchers classify the causes of stress into three categories: emotion work, practice culture and work role and demands.
The happiest type of doctors are general practitioners. Working as a GP allows a doctor to maintain a healthy work-life balance whilst providing care to patients in the community, resulting in deeply satisfying work. Radiologists, anaesthetists and dermatologists also frequently rank highly for happiness.
General practice has been the first choice of future career specialty of only 20% of medical graduates, and this percentage has been largely unchanged over recent years.
Visit a Pharmacy for healthcare advice without an appointment. It is estimated that every year, 50 million visits to the GP are made for minor ailments such as coughs and colds, mild eczema, and athlete's foot. By visiting your pharmacy instead, you could save yourself time and trouble.
Based on our latest GP salary survey (December 2021), the average GP salary in Australia is $253,000 for GPs who work 7 or more sessions per week (full-time). The annual General Practitioner salary for part-time GPs, working 6 sessions or less per week, amounts to an average of $194,000 pa.
How much does a Gp make in Australia? The average gp salary in Australia is $146,250 per year or $75 per hour. Entry-level positions start at $84,430 per year, while most experienced workers make up to $257,888 per year.
A salaried GP, who wished to remain anonymous, told Pulse they also aim to retire between 50 and 55 as they 'cannot sustain the workload'.
The most commonly cited reason for wanting to leave was burnout and workload, although issues about pensions also came up. One GP said the sooner they leave general practice 'the better' and they 'wouldn't recommend' the career path to anyone.
And nearly nine out of 10 reported that their workload was excessive and either prevents or significantly prevents the provision of quality and safe care. The survey also revealed that, using mean average figures, GPs are working more than 130 per cent of their contracted hours in their primary roles.
In future, the GPS market is expected to flourish with new technological applications. GPS has become the key component in many of the location-aware smartphone applications that have become so popular in recent times.
It includes a new pay deal for all staff working in general practice and plans to reduce the administrative burden for GPs, enabling them to focus on providing high-quality care in contract arrangements from 2023.
In the report, commercial intelligence firm Definitive Healthcare estimated that 333,942 health care providers left the workforce due to retirement, burnout, and other pandemic-related stressors.
Doctors say this is because of more than a decade of pay erosion and punitive pension taxation arrangements. The situation for surgeons is more severe with half of consultant surgeon respondents (50%) having indicated that they were planning to leave.
GPs included in this study highlighted some of the specific work pressures compared with other doctors, such as: working beyond rostered hours; a significant proportion of high pressure days; feeling unable to cope with workload (as a specialty, GPs do more face-to-face patient contact as core to their expected work ...
UK GPs are the least satisfied with the amount of time they are able to spend with patients – just 1 in 4 UK GPs (29%) feel satisfied with the length of time spent with patients, and just 5% feel 'extremely' or 'very' satisfied.
The primary disadvantage of being a salaried GP is that the remunerations are lower than a locum GP and you generally have to work harder affecting your work life balance. A GP Partner will share responsibility for the running of the business and gives you the most control over how the practice develops.