GP workforce project Beds&Herts

Background The number of GPs as a proportion of the health care workforce in the UK is decreasing, leading to increased capacity and financial pressures on the NHS (Roland & Everington, 2016). Among practicing GPs, expectations to quit GP practice increased from 2012-2015 among both younger and older practitioners (Gibson et al., 2015).
Reasons for leaving include high stress and pressure, feeling overworked, working too many hours, and poor work-life balance (Dale et al., 2015; Doran, Fox, Taylor, & Harris, 2015). Compatibility with family life is one of the most important reasons for choosing a career as a GP among both men and women, therefore if changes in this area are experienced it could be a potent deterrent for remaining in general practice (Watson, Humphrey, Peters-klimm, & Hamilton, 2011). The perception of increasing workload in the UK is backed up by analysis of consultation data (Hobbs et al., 2016), and level of stress among GPs has been found to be increasing (Gibson et al., 2015). Further, GPs in the UK experience higher levels of stress and less job satisfaction than GPs in other countries (Martin, Davies, & Gershlick, 2016).
Many GPs also express unhappiness with day-to-day life as a GP, in particular with changes to the GP role, and report unhappiness with professional culture and feeling loss of autonomy and professional control (Doran et al., 2015). Job satisfaction among GPs in 2015 was found to be the lowest since 2001 (Gibson et al., 2015), and job dissatisfaction is associated with leaving general practice (Hann, Reeves, & Sibbald, 2011).
Reducing the number of GPs that leave general practice early has been proposed as a cost-effective strategy to help reduce the GP workforce crisis (Doran et al., 2015).