Dangerous shortage of medics threatens safe patient care in England, top GP says

GPs can no longer guarantee safe care for millions of patients because of a dangerous shortage of medics, Britain’s top family doctor has said.

Prof Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), said surgeries were desperate to hire more doctors to meet soaring demand for care but could not afford to do so because of a lack of core funding.

Exhausted family doctors have been working “completely unsafe hours” because their surgeries did not have the cash to recruit new staff or replace those quitting, increasing the risk of serious errors or deadly conditions being missed, she said.

“GPs will always push themselves to do what’s best for our patients, but we can’t go on like this,” Hawthorne said. “GP workload pressures are so pronounced that many of our members are tell