Waits for hospital treatment are piling extra work on GPs, says General Practice chair Katie Bramall-Stainer: 'Patients often feel like they’re lost in a black hole once they've been referred. They have no idea when they’ll be seen and their only choice is to go back to their local GP.’ #GPnews

We are drowning in work in General Practice in Northern Ireland and the long hospital waiting lists are a significant part of the problem!

It is incredible just how committed our Doctors are and how hard they are pushing to reverse this. Most of us never thought we’d ever see Doctor strikes but we can see what is happening right in front of us. We need Govt to step up.

And even back in 2018 - when there were 1800 patients per GP - it was still unmanageable. Governments mindlessly plough on with trying to make it work with fewer GPs and real terms funding cuts. It’s not working for patients, it certainly isn’t working for GPs. Just #BackGPs

“Our lazy staff have stopped working loads of free overtime for us!” Yes - you finally found the biting point for NHS staff. And it only took 15yrs of savage pay cuts, “efficiency savings”, deepening toxicity of culture, daily moral injury, and the targeting of whistleblowers.

⬇️This is for all of General Practice⬇️

Would recommend anyone in healthcare attend this. It’s geared for surgeons but there will be transferrable learning. We all need to understand human factors in healthcare!

It’s so disheartening when you have worked your socks off to help 50 patients in a day and then the 51st can’t get an appointment that day and tells you that you’ve let them down! 😢

Important figures. At a time of rising population, age and complexity we have significantly less GP practices. Of note the headcount figure in the second tweet is actually counting people that don’t even live or work in NI

When we hear the same thing so strongly from such a breadth of Drs, including our juniors, we know we have a very, very significant problem. How this is resolved is not only important for now, but quite literally will define the future NHS

Alan Stout The model we get will be the one we pay for , if we penny pinch the NHS and our doctors then watch as the private sector flourishes . You’ll just end up paying for it in a different way ! Invest in your staff and they feel valued and will go the extra mile

COST COMPARISON Glastonbury weekend ticket £355 Full car service + MOT £235 Pet insurance £360 Football season ticket £495 5 take-away Coffees/week £3.75 - £975 Did you know that you get all your GP practice services for a year for £165 It’s too little & been cut £35 #GPCrisis

A year of GP services for £169 per person. You likely spent more to service your car, for your mobile phone contract, and for your TV subscription. We need to value our health and invest in it.

Words are cheap. I’ll judge him based on his actions.

Alan Stout Let’s be honest as it stands Labour will either be responsible for the restoration of a functioning NHS or if they don’t listen will be responsible for its demise !! For Primary Care at least we have 2-3 years at best 🙏

Error Management! Niall Downey

Health is clearly devolved, but we need you to have significant influence in NI too. With only 5.4% of NHS budget spent in GP here (lowest of all nations by a mile), we are quite literally depriving a huge number of people access to the most fundamental part of health care

Alan Stout A 5 year plan that increases our proportion of budget by minimum of 1 % a year and within few years we would be in a very different place. Money doesn’t solve all our problems but proper funding will go a long way to stabilise and then allow Partnership become attractive again🙏