Sustainable GP workforce to support effective and equitable patient care

There are not enough GPs in the NHS. This problem is worse in areas of the country where poverty and underinvestment in healthcare mean patients experience poorer health than wealthier regions. Encouraging more doctors to choose and continue in a GP career is a government priority. However, with many doctors reducing their working hours or retiring early, we need to look at how we support and retain the GPs we have, alongside enabling recruitment of new GPs.

Previous research has focused on individual level GP career choices. Less well understood is how organisation of work, systems and interactions within general practice, shape these ultimate career choices. We use a broad and system-level approach to understand what factors within the healthcare system could enable a sustainable GP workforce to achieve effective and equitable patient care.

We have worked with PPI and stakeholders throughout this project. A number of recent publications have focused on problems and challenges. In order to inform future policy and practice, we wanted also to explore what does work and potential mitigating factors. This included conversations about the joy in general practice (see word cloud). 

We continue to work on the outputs from this study. Read more about our project here:

https://www.spcr.nihr.ac.uk/research/projects/sustainable-gp-workforce-a-realist-review 

Our project protocols are available here: 

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42023395583  

General practitioner workforce sustainability to maximise effective and equitable patient care: a realist review protocol. Park, S., Owen-Boukra, E., Burford, B., Cohen, T., Duddy, C., Dunn, H., Fadia, V., Goodman, C., Henry, C., Lamb, E. I., Ogden, M., Rapley, T., Rees, E. L., Vance, G., & Wong, G. (2024). BMJ Open. 

Here is a pre-print of key findings from this realist review entitled 'General Practitioner Workforce Sustainability to maximise effective and equitable patient care: a realist review:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.26.25321129v1

We have presented this study at: AMEE, 2024, BJGP Research & Publishing Conference 2024; SAPC SE Madingley Hall; Cambridge, 2024; and SAPC ASM 2023.

We've recently released a report entitled "General Practitioner Workforce Sustainability to Maximise Effective and Equitable Patient Care: Findings from a Realist Review": http://dx.doi.org/10.5287/ora-qrezbj8eo