Doctor-turned-soldier warns that exhaustion of GPs ‘will lead to collapse of the NHS’ | UK News

Imagine a medical clinic where its medical staff are “on their knees” and completely “overwhelmed” by their incessant workload.

I can pretty much guarantee it wouldn’t be Witley’s surgery.

It’s in a quiet, leafy village in the suburban belt Surrey – not on a large area of ​​the city center city council.

But what is happening here is repeating itself in GP offices across the country. And it is wreaking havoc.

“We’ve been holding the line all this time and rather than getting better at the moment it’s getting harder and harder,” Dr Dave Triska tells me.

He is a partner of the firm and cares about the well-being of his colleagues.

“A typical work week,” he told me, “we would have at least a few staff who would break down in tears and people would feel like they couldn’t continue working in general practice.”

There are 11,000 patients on Witley’s surgery registry.

Currently, they treat about 1,800 patients per week. This is double the number of pre-locks. But it is without staff or additional resources.

Dr Triska says the current situation is unsustainable.

The workload has not only doubled, the nature of work has changed. It’s much more intense.

The number of patients coming to Dr Triska with mental health problems has skyrocketed.

They now represent 40% of its workload.

Others have complex medical needs exacerbated by the pandemic, and some are accessing healthcare for the first time since the lockdown.

And then there are the patients who are getting sicker and sicker as they join nearly five million others on hospital waiting lists.

None of these fit easily into a 10-minute consultation.

In the few hours I spent in surgery, the three doctors on duty saw or treated 90 patients with each other.

That makes …