A YORK GP says immediate action is needed to tackle the toughest challenges he has ever seen facing GP practices - and is appealing for mutual understanding from the community rather than vitriol and anger.

Professor Mike Holmes says GPs and patients were dissatisfied and struggling before the Covid-19 pandemic created additional pressures without the resources to manage them.

He says he and Laura Jefferson, a research scientist at the University of York, have published a paper in the British Journal of General Practice to look at what could be done quickly as the NHS faces long waits, financial struggles, low public satisfaction and recruitment issues and data suggests one in seven GP posts are currently vacant.

Writing in his weekly column for The Press, Prof Holmes says: "There is clearly a need to invest in the workforce to deliver greater numbers of doctors and allied health professionals, but it’s not as simple as just increasing numbers.

"We recognise that we cannot develop a new workforce overnight but we must take immediate action and in the spirit of CS Lewis: ‘You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending’.

He claims political and media-driven headlines around the role of GPs during the pandemic had done much to demoralise the profession and threatened their important relationship with patients.

"Is it any wonder that young doctors in the UK are not choosing General Practice in sufficient numbers?" he asks.

"Much more support is needed to address this at practice level."

He says he believes the reality of what GPs do in 2022 is not understood.

"We don’t just deal with minor illness; in fact, it is a small proportion of what we do.

"We manage complex conditions, cancer, end of life care, mental illness, long term conditions… the list goes on – providing comprehensive coordinated care.

"We try to put illness in the context of people’s lives so that we can personalise care.

"We try to offer disease prevention and ensure the precious NHS resources are not wasted.

"We are trying to do all this whilst we are under-resourced, with not enough people, working out of ageing premises and in a system that prioritises access over everything else. This has got to change."

He says North Yorkshire and Humber have been at the forefront in new initiatives to make General Practice more attractive, such as introducing General Practice fellowship training schemes, mentorship initiatives, working at scale and working collaboratively.

"There is amazing work happening to introduce new clinicians into our surgeries with really encouraging results.

"We’re introducing technology to help to share learning and make systems more efficient. These ideas need to be supported to go further and wider."

He appeals for mutual understanding and support from the community and 'anger and vitriol directed at the NHS, General Practice or Social Care simply doesn’t help."

*Today's column by Prof Holmes is on page 12.