A campaign hopes to see hundreds of doctors coming back to general practice
Following the 800 GPs who have come back to GP surgeries after coming out of retirement or returning from overseas, a new campaign hopes to increase that number. The campaign comes as part of the NHS Long Term Plan. Health Education England and NHS England have produced a brochure to help GPs who are considering a return to general practice.
The Long Term Plan aims to recruit 22,000 health professionals. It is hoped this recruitment will not only improve services for patients but will also help to ease GP workloads which may help general practice to seem more inviting to those who have left GP surgeries.
Furthermore, the NHS is also launching an Induction and Refresher Scheme that will run as a print and social media advertising campaign. The Induction and Refresher Scheme began in 2016 as a way to make it easier for doctors to return to the profession. It hopes the advertising campaign will help the NHS to hit its target of recruiting 500 GPS by 2020.
So far, the scheme has been successful as 785 GP applied to the scheme by the end of 2018 and 279 have now fully completed the programme. However, NHS England and Health Education England are hoping to recruit hundreds more.
Speaking of the scheme, Dr Nikita Kanani said; “We’re delighted to see how many GPs have returned via the scheme, with more than 50% of the recruitment target already achieved.”
The Health Minister, Steve Brine, added; “We want to make it quicker and easier for former GPs to return to the profession, confident they will have the support and funding they need so that patients can benefit from their wealth of experience.”
Speaking of the Induction and Refresher Scheme, Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said; “The Induction and Refresher scheme has demonstrated positive results so far – and it’s great that so many appropriately-trained doctors want to work in UK general practice – we now need to build on this success and expand it.”
The brochures will show family doctors that there is an extra £1 billion a year for funding general practice while primary care networks are expanding to create growing multi-disciplinary teams that support GPs and lessen their workload.
