Wales is “ill prepared” for crisis in GP recruitment, BMA warns

Abstract

The NHS is currently facing a GP recruitment crisis “for which Wales is ill prepared,” the BMA has said. It warned that many GPs in Wales were considering early retirement, that there were problems in recruiting for both daytime and out of hours services, and that too few GPs were in training in Wales. BMA Wales’s General Practitioners Committee (GPCW) has issued a report that sets out the issues affecting GPs in Wales.1 The report said, “The whole time equivalent for GPs is said to have increased by 11%, but the methodology for calculating this appears to be flawed. GPCW believes that the whole time equivalent number has remained broadly static.” It said that 23% of GPs in Wales were aged 55 or over and that, to meet the demands of rising workload in general practice, at least 1.6 whole time equivalent GPs were needed to replace each retiring GP in Wales. In addition to an …