Ever since interest rates soared to historic norms, many doctors have been struggling to afford the payments on their second yacht. With Rachel Reeves dishing out a 22 per cent pay rise to junior doctors, it was unsurprising when GPs recently voted for industrial action for the first time in 60 years. Not only is the average GP having to sit around chatting to people for a measly £88,000 a year, but — as they never tire of telling us — their surgeries are overstretched and they have to see too many patients.
I’m being facetious, of course (or am I?) but everyone agrees that GPs spend too much time doing work below their pay grade — repeat prescriptions, dishing out paracetamol, dealing with cuts and bruises, malingerers, lonely old people, etc. — and yet the medical establishment is curiously resistant to any attempt to lighten their load. This week’s proposal from the Tony Blair Institute to replace some GP consultations with artificial intelligence was not met with rapturous applause from our medical overlords. In fact, they hated it. And yet if you speak to any family doctor privately, they will tell you that they spend too much time talking to people who have such trivial or routine ailments that a chimpanzee could diagnose and treat them. Patients, meanwhile, often see GPs as unnecessary gatekeepers to specialists and antibiotics. The solution is obvious: triage patients and send the low level cases to more junior personnel.
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