GPs are Lazy and Greedy and not Overworked

August 19, 2024 by Doctor Vernon Coleman

GPs are complaining that they are desperately overworked and cannot cope. Doctors’ representatives say the same thing.

But the evidence proves that GPs are NOT overworked. After all, the average GP now works just 23 to 24 hours a week. Most people would regard that as part time work. And GPs are paid around £150,000 a year.

Despite all this, GPs are threatening to do even less work.

But look at the facts.

Today there are nearly twice as many GPs in England and Wales as there were in 1964 when I started medical school.

And if you look at the number of GPs per 100,000 patients, the figures show that there are more GPs available than ever.

Back in 1964, there were 42 GPs per 100,000 patients.

Today, there are around 60 GPs per 100,000 patients.

And remember that GPs used to do home visits, night calls, weekend calls and calls on bank holidays. It was not uncommon for a GP to see 20 patients in a morning surgery, 20 patients in an evening surgery and do a list of home visits in between. At night and at weekends the doctor would be on call to visit patients at home.

Today, very few GPs do any of those things.

And many GPs refuse to see patients `live’ – insisting on doing their consultations over the phone or the internet. All those GPs are a disgrace to the profession because it is impossible to provide proper care for all patients without seeing most of them in person. .

Ring a GP’s surgery today with an emergency and you will be told to go to hospital. In the bad old days GPs would visit patients at home 24 hours a day. And would sew up wounds and deal with a whole range of emergencies.

The only possible conclusion is that today’s GPs are not overworked.

Indeed, they do far less work than their predecessors did decades ago.

There are more GPs than ever. And they’re doing less work.

It’s not surprising that hospital Accident and Emergency departments cannot cope.

I read an interview with a GP the other day in which the doctor said that `taking bloods and other tests’ were not part of his contract and that he and his colleagues weren’t getting paid for doing these things. He said he was going to work to rule in such a way that he didn’t have any of his money docked. I was ashamed to read that self-serving, pitiful comment. I am, to be honest, strangely relieved that most of the honest, hard-working, caring doctors I worked with are dead and will never know how low medicine has sunk. If GPs really don’t like working for the NHS they should have the guts to resign and set up as private practitioners. They don’t do this, I suspect, because they would have to work much harder if they were private doctors. NHS GPs are hugely overpaid and underworked.

When I was a GP we worked a damned sight harder, and much longer hours (the average GP today works the equivalent of three days a week) than today’s doctors. We had responsibility for our patients 24 hours a day, every day of the year. And we took bloods, gave injections and syringed ears without whingeing that these things weren’t our responsibility. We put in stitches and then, later, we took them out again. We didn’t have a list of things that were outside our contract.

It seems to me that many of today’s GPs don’t really care about their patients but seem to be in medicine only for the money.

I weep at how general practice has deteriorated.

Patients get a terrible deal. Too many doctors seem to me to be lazy and greedy; in medicine only for what they can get out of it. They are paid massively well to do very little work. They have no sense of responsibility and no sense of vocation.

Many in the medical establishment are besotted with the myth of global warming and have talked about cutting back medical services to deal with this imaginary problem.

I believe this is all part of the push to Net Zero. I fear that the medical establishment and parts of the British Medical Association are so besotted with the myth of global warming that they want to destroy health care to increase the death rate, reduce the population and reduce our use of fossil fuels.

NOTE
For more information about surviving an encounter with a doctor please read `How to stop your doctor killing you’ and `Coleman’s Laws’ by Vernon Coleman. You can buy copies via the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com

And for a brief analysis of what’s wrong with the NHS, read `The NHS: What’s wrong and how to put it right’ by Vernon Coleman. This book is also available in the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com