THE leader of Scotland's family doctors has warned general practice must resist a fast-food approach to patient care as he told delegates at their annual con-ference the workload on primary care providers was becoming unsustainable.
Dr Alan McDevitt, chairman of the Scottish Local Medical Committees, told regional GP representatives they were "bogged down by bureaucracy" and time was being wasted during their 10-minute consultations because "before you even speak to the patient, you face a barrage of questions and reminders from your computer".
Speaking at the SLMC annual conference at the Beardmore Hotel in Clydebank, Dr McDevitt said: "There are those who think that general practice can be broken into a series of menus like a fast-food restaurant giving the patient a limited choice of options delivered exactly the same way. That's not the way to deliver complex personalised human care."
He added: "It is clear the rising workload just isn't sustainable. I've seen the work piling up, but what I don't see are the resources to sustain this workload.
"Something's got to give and I do not want our patients to suffer because general practice has reached saturation point.
"We need more GPs, more practice staff, better facilities and increased funding to ensure we can do the thing we do best – make our patients' health better."
The conference heard from GPs from around Scotland who said they were struggling to cope as duties once carried out in hospital were being transferred to GP surgeries, with one GP suggesting an end to patient home visits in an attempt to reduce their workload.
Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Alex Neil delivering the day's keynote speech, said he wanted to cut the number of targets for doctors. "I want to reduce targets where they're unnecessary or distorting clinical practice. How you run your GP practice is your business. My job is to say to you, 'In return for public money these are the outcomes we want'," he said.
The conference heard the profession was facing a recruitment crisis, particularly in remote and rural areas, as less than a quarter of graduates were now expressing a preference to specialise in general practice. The problem would be exacerbated, said delegates, when the training period was extended in 2014.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article