There is No Magic GP Tree

Meanwhile, in Great Britain...

Here it’s EMRs and insurance companies. Across the pond, it’s ministers and bureaucrats. It’s all the same: The demands on doctors are oppressive and many are leaving the profession or retiring early. But who will replace those who give up medicine? Doctors don’t grow on trees anywhere that I know of.

This is a quote from an article in Pulse Today. It was in my inbox when I came home from work this afternoon:

“… there is no magic GP tree; we can’t just go and get GPs off the shelf. There is plenty we can do, of course. Increase funding, improve retention with programmes that actually work, stop the GP bashing in the media and by ministers. But even with the Government starting to treat GPs as they should be treated, the years of neglect of the profession means it will only go so far. It is at least a decade before we will see such measures making a tangible difference.”