Our work pushing back against abuse of practice staff continues to be our highest priority. We will soon be meeting with representatives of the Met Police following our letter to them last month and have spoken with several MPs and local authority representatives in response to our letters to them. A sample of the MP letter can be viewed here.
If you have not already done so please fill in our survey on abuse, the data and examples from it are very useful in illustrating the scale of the problem and the realities practice staff face.
We know that many practices feel particularly demoralised by the rhetoric coming from the Government around access to face-to-face appointments based on patient want rather than clinical need, including the latest package of performance management measures announced last week. The advice from the BMA’s GPC is that GPs and practices should not engage in the attempts to implement these at a local level until advised otherwise.
Dr Michelle Drage wrote to everyone working in London general practice about this yesterday, on Monday and on Friday. We will continue to keep practices regularly updated given the level of concern and frustration.