26.06.17
Doctors call for ‘black alert’ to be introduced in general practice
Doctors have called on the government to introduce a “black alert” for GPs so that clinicians can alert authorities when surgeries are running over maximum safe capacity.
The same measure already exists for hospitals to protect patient safety and stop staff caving under huge demand, but it has not yet been introduced in general practice.
But now, a motion has been tabled by the East Midlands Council arm of the British Medical Association (BMA) to introduce the idea.
“This meeting notes the regular declarations of ‘black alert’ by hospitals and demands that a similar reporting system be created for general practice to indicate that maximum safe capacity has been reached,” the motion reads.
The Royal College of GPs (RCGP) has backed the call for a “warning sign” to be brought in for GPs, a call that the organisation has also made for a number of years.
“Workload in general practice has soared 16% over the last seven years, yet resources for our service have declined, and our workforce hasn’t risen in step with growing patient demand,” said chairman of the RCGP Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard.
“Hospitals have ‘black alerts’ – they don’t use them when they don’t need to, they only use them when they can’t cope, to protect patient safety,” she added. “We don’t have an equivalent in general practice, yet our members tell us that they are routinely working 11-hour intensive days in clinic, and then having to deal with a mountain of urgent paperwork on top; this isn’t safe, for the GP or their patients.”
Prof Stokes-Lampard argued that other safety-critical professions had mechanisms in place to protect them against fatigue – airline pilots, for example, or lorry drivers need to take regular breaks – because when you’re fatigued you are more likely to make mistakes – yet in general practice, this is actually poses a risk to patient safety.
“Ultimately, we need NHS England’s GP Forward View, including pledges for £2.4bn extra a year, and 5,000 more GPs by 2020, to be delivered in full and as a matter of urgency, so that we can continue to deliver safe patient care to over one million patients in general practice every day,” she concluded.
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