GPs are being ‘muscled out’ of the NHS by low pay and persistent workforce problems, a co-chair of the GP registrars committee told GP Online.
The doctor warned the title that registrars were leaving primary care after failing to find roles and that pay was too low.
Last month it emerged that more than one in four sessional GPs were looking for work, according to a new Pulse survey.
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, NASGP chair, wrote: “General practice was traditionally painted as a bucolic idyll of highly valuable family practitioners, highly effective gatekeepers for the NHS, supporting the health of the nation. But these days it’s looking much more like a painting from Hieronymus Bosch.
“We are all too familiar with burnout prematurely ending the careers of many of our GP colleagues, but now we are hearing from GP registrars themselves, at the beginning of their career, that we are also failing to ignite enthusiasm for general practice as a career.
“By continuing to undervalue our newly qualified colleagues by advertising for roles considerably less than ever before, it is clearly another nail in the coffin for an effective GP workforce that will have even more significant knock on effects for workload, and even more burnout in the future.”