In A&E and a doctor has just taken my pulse. To be fair, I shouldn't have brought a bag of lentils to hospital in the first place.

The NHS is in the news again. 

Labour have promised to increase the numbers of GP’s working in the NHS, but they have also stated that the way GP’s are to work is to change.  The Conservatives have promised that they will also increase the numbers of GP’s available and that they will allow patients to see their own GP if elected in 2015 seven days a week, the GP being available from eight in the morning till eight at night.  And Labour have promised to bring back the ability to see a GP within 48 hours. 

But they seem for forget that the NHS is failing.  Doctors who work in Accident and Emergency departments are leaving, hospitals are having to pay money for locum cover, more money than would be spent on regular staff, and the same is the case in general practice.  Some in the land of the RCGP argue that GP’s should have a bigger slice of the NHS pie when it comes to the money that is available.  My argument is that the pie should be bigger.  While everyone is aware that the deficit is something that has to be tackled, people forget that the doctors who work in the NHS can leave, and do.

For those who think that GP’s are paid too much and under worked, the simple counter argument is that there are not enough General Practitioners to work in the system as it is.  There have been loads of surgeries that have closed, and some of these have been in the private sector.  This is nothing to do with the way that the CQC will be acting to close down failing surgeries, but is quite simply because there are too few doctors who want to work as General Practitioners and this is shown by the number of training places that are unfilled.  People say that GP’s do not work after surgeries close, but the out of hours doctors services are staffed by GP’s who are working in most cases for private companies (something brought in under the Labour government for those who associate the increased role of the private sector in the NHS with the Conservatives).

So, remember this, there are not enough doctors working in A&E or General Practice as it is.  If someone says that they want to make the NHS work better, they need to tackle this without decreasing funding to the rest of the NHS.