Doctors fear for staff safety under extended hours scheme

Jun 30 2008 by Liza Williams, Liverpool Daily Post

Doctors fear for staff safety under extended hours scheme

A LIVERPOOL doctor says staff safety will be put at risk by Government plans to extend GP opening hours.

Rob Barnett, secretary of the Liverpool Local Medical Committee, thinks steps to make practices open later in the evening or at the weekends have not been thought through, and will leave GPs and receptionists vulnerable when working in isolation.

His comments come after the Daily Post revealed that no city GPs are offering the new hours the Government is demanding.

The picture is echoed across Merseyside and only in Wirral – where 15 out of 61 practices are open at unusual hours – are patients offered unsocial hours surgeries, according to Department of Health (DoH) figures.

Dr Barnett said: “People do feel vulnerable working in isolation at night. One GP last year was attacked on leaving his surgery and there have been issues concerning security that would not occur in the day with lots more staff about.

“There are many options the Government could have looked into- such as local practices pooling their resources and opening on different evenings.

“Plus, if a doctor has worked all morning and afternoon, he or she is not likely to be physically or mentally fit to do the evening as well.

“The only way you could provide surgeries at other hours is by bringing more doctors into the system and that will not happen.”

Under a deal struck between the BMA and the Government practices that refuse to offer extra hours will lose about £18,000 of funding.

GPs in Britain last year received a 9.8% annual rise on average, but Dr Barnett says Liverpool doctors saw a much lower increase and that costs of opening a surgery later at night are huge, if you include the extra staff needed and building costs: “I know that people think we are earning a huge amount of money and that we should open for longer.

“However, that is not the case for Liverpool doctors. Patient demand is no where near as strong in Liverpool as the Government is claiming either.

“There are many flaws in the plans – for example changes have not been made to funding for nursing hours, so if a patient wants to have, for instance, a smear test after 6.30pm they cannot“.”

A spokesman for the Patients’ Association said: “We are all paying to fund the NHS, but we are not getting the same service for our money. Patients who want extended hours but can’t get them are trapped – and that’s not a National Health Service.”

lizawilliams