Professor Mike Holmes, who coordinates York’s vaccination centre, says in his weekly column for The Press that immediate action is needed to tackle the toughest challenges facing GP practices he has ever seen.

We have real evidence now that, by working collaboratively as GP Practices and alongside colleagues from other sectors, we can make a real difference for our patients.

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, the opportunity to work with colleagues across health and social care feels really positive. At the same time, however, we are facing the toughest challenges I have every seen. The NHS on all sides is seeing long waits, financial struggles, low public satisfaction and recruitment issues, to name a few. Recent weeks have seen GPs giving evidence to a parliamentary committee on the crisis facing UK General Practice in the hope that it will broaden understanding and solutions will emerge.

Myself and Laura Jefferson, a research scientist at University of York, have published a paper this week in the British Journal of General Practice to look at what could be done quickly. There is clearly a need to invest in the workforce to deliver greater numbers of doctors and allied health professionals, but it’s not as simple as just increasing numbers.

We explored how GPs and, let’s be honest, patients were dissatisfied and struggling before the COVID-19 pandemic and how this period has exposed GPs to additional pressures without the resources to manage them. Several commentaries have been made as to the sources of these pressures and there has been a call to action for policymakers to address growing issues of general practice capacity. UK GP workforce vacancy data suggests one in seven GP posts are currently vacant.

We recognise that we cannot develop a new workforce overnight but we must take immediate action and in the spirit of CS Lewis: ‘You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending’.

We’ve noted that the political and media-driven headlines around the role of GPs during the pandemic have done much to demoralise the profession and have threatened our important relationship with patients. Is it any wonder that young doctors in the UK are not choosing General Practice in sufficient numbers? Much more support is needed to address this at practice level.If doctors are to be attracted into and retained within General Practice, the professions’ contribution must be understood and valued. We have heard successive Prime Ministers refer to General Practice as the cornerstone of the NHS, and yet GPs have faced extreme public scrutiny and continue to feel undervalued.

I think the reality of what GPs do in 2022 is not understood. We don’t just deal with minor illness; in fact, it is a small proportion of what we do. We manage complex conditions, cancer, end of life care, mental illness, long term conditions… the list goes on – providing comprehensive coordinated care. We try to put illness in the context of people’s lives so that we can personalise care. We try to offer disease prevention and ensure the precious NHS resources are not wasted.

We are trying to do all this whilst we are under-resourced, with not enough people, working out of aging premises and in a system that prioritises access over everything else. This has got to change.Here in North Yorkshire and Humber we’ve been at the forefront in new initiatives to make General Practice more attractive. We were at the forefront of introducing General Practice fellowship training schemes, mentorship initiatives, working at scale and working collaboratively.

There is amazing work happening to introduce new clinicians into our surgeries with really encouraging results. We’re introducing technology to help to share learning and make systems more efficient. These ideas need to be supported to go further and wider.The solutions are not straightforward I know. But General Practices must be empowered to lead this change and not have change thrust upon them by those who don’t understand this complex specialty.

I really believe that here in North Yorkshire and Humber we are well placed to achieve some of these changes but we need your support to do it.

So, what am I asking for? Mutual understanding and support from our community. We are trying so hard to work through this and in York there is lots of work being done to drive these solutions. I promise you we understand the situation from the public’s perspective and will continue to listen, but anger and vitriol directed at the NHS, General Practice or Social Care simply doesn’t help.