I READ with great disappointment the inaccurate and misleading comments made by Dr Hassan contained in the article recently published in your paper entitled – A&E: “We’re a victim of our own success – one GP even brought his son in because it was quicker”.

General practice is open for more hours per week now than it was pre-2004 when the GP contract changed. We now open at 8am rather than 8.30am and close at 6.30pm rather than 6pm.

I am not sure where Dr Hassan gets his 5 hour working day from.

Yesterday I arrived in my surgery at 6.30am and finally left at 8.30pm – having failed to complete all the paperwork. Yet another early start today to catch up.

General Practice is having great difficulty in recruiting new GPs and retaining older GPs because the working day has got progressively longer as the workload has risen.

There are GPs available outside normal working hours, in a service provided by Out of Hours. This service is busy, at times very stretched and could be improved with more investment.

In 2006 there were over 280 million consultations in general practice, in 2013 that had increased to 340 million (over 1,000,000 people will see their GP today) with a prediction that by 2018 this could reach just over 400,000,000.

This compares to 18.5 million A/E attendances per year in 2006 to 22 million A/E attendances in 2014/15.

The workload in general practice has increased far greater year on year than the growth in A/E attendances.

Over the same period the investment in hospitals has increased significantly, whereas the investment in general practice and other out of hospital services has fallen as a % of the total NHS spend.

In a recent report “The Five Year Forward View” the NHS has stated that over the last few years general practice and the community health services have been under invested in and the additional money year on year has gone into expanding hospital based services.

I am sure Dr Hassan will therefore support the plan that has been set out for the NHS to invest more in general practice and out of hospital care, to provide more services to prevent those being seen or admitted to hospital when this could be avoided.

What might have been a better message to your readers is that the NHS is a great institution and we are very fortunate locally that the quality of both general practice and hospital based services is very high. Currently there is no doubt that all services are under great pressure from rising workload.

We need you to help us.

Use our services appropriately. If you have a minor self-limiting illness consider self management (there is an excellent website that will advise you on the best way of doing this - www.selfcareforum.org or the NHS Choices website). Your local pharmacist can often help with advice or over the counter treatment for minor ailments.

If you have an urgent problem your practice will see you on the same day, but routine problems may need to wait a little longer.

Please think before you use A/E. As Dr Hassan says, it is an Accident and Emergency Department and not an alternative to general practice.

In my view GPs and hospitals need to be working together to find solutions to meet the demands of our population rather than trying to blame each other.

DR NIGEL WATSON

Local GP & Chief Executive, Wessex Local Medical Committees (Local Representative Body of General Practice)