The Socialist 13 January 2016

NHS not safe in Tory hands

Corbyn must lead a fight against the right and for an anti-austerity programme

NHS not safe in Tory hands

Junior doctors' strike: picket photos and reports

Health workers under attack!

Doctors battle burnout as 100 full-up GP surgeries apply to shut their doors

"Shattered but proud", a day in the life of a student nurse

Student nurses march to oppose bursary cut

Bosses 'earn' year's pay in under a week

BBC planned live Labour resignation to damage Corbyn

EU probes power plant for wrongdoing over switch from coal to biomass

What We Saw

Them & Us

Slums, speculation, sell-offs and sardines

Cameron's housing con

Housing staff strike against cuts

Cameron's 10,000 new homes won't hide the problem

476,000 homes in England go unbuilt by speculators

A clear strategy to defeat the Tory cuts

Council uses reserves to stop cuts

Councillors must resist cuts

Southampton people's budget meeting

Victor Jara's revolutionary life, poetry and politics

Letters

Sexual assaults in Cologne exploited by racist establishment and far right

Saudi Arabia mass executions

Honduras: Day of the endangered lawyer

West Dunbartonshire teachers strike

Energy-filled pickets at EDF

Workplace news in brief

"We hope to inspire people to go out and spread their passion for the Socialist"

Report: Socialist Party national women's meeting

Eleanor Marx: a life of struggle, solidarity and socialism

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Doctors battle burnout as 100 full-up GP surgeries apply to shut their doors

Jackie Grunsell, NHS General Practitioner

'GPs are underworked and overpaid' the tabloid headlines would have us believe. So why has doctors' union the British Medical Association (BMA) felt it necessary to call a special conference later this month - specifically to discuss the crisis in general practice?

The fact is that funding for general practice has dropped dramatically.

GPs undertake 90% of patient contact that takes place in the NHS. We are constantly told more services have to be, and are, provided in the community. Yet funding has fallen from 11% of the NHS budget to a historic low of 8.39%.

As well as more work being piled on general practice, there are fewer GPs to do it.

The Royal College of General Practitioners has estimated an extra 9,540 GPs are needed nationally to cope with the demands of a growing and ageing population with more complex health needs. Yet burnout means a third of GPs say they want to retire in the next five years according to a BMA survey.

And they aren't being replaced. Until 2013 almost all GP trainee vacancies were filled, but in 2104 over one in ten was left empty. Growing numbers of practices are failing to recruit new GPs.

Quality

GPs want to provide safe, high-quality care for patients. The stress of feeling unable to give patients what they need - while fending off a barrage of increased paperwork and tasks not directly related to patient care - has forced 100 practices to apply to NHS England to close their surgeries to any new patients. They feel unable to cope with the existing workload.

Despite this, patients' satisfaction with their GPs remains high in surveys. The quality of care given has not been shown to have fallen - yet. But the situation is unsustainable.

A call for GPs to do what the junior doctors have done, and take industrial action to demand the government increase funding and resources, has to be a central part of the BMA's conference. This is only way we can maintain the standard of care as it is, or ever hope to improve it.

In this issue

What we think

Corbyn must lead a fight against the right and for an anti-austerity programme