Thread by @DrHannahBB

So let’s talk about #GP burnout, because it’s Sunday night, I’m back in tomorrow, and I’m sure many are dreading it. The work is hard, the hours are ludicrous and the staff are too few. But none of those are the main reason I find the job almost unbearable sometimes. 🧵1/?

I am lucky - I am still in training, I am well supported and in a lovely practice with a great team. I work 3 days a week, because wonky body isn’t gonna manage any more than that. I’m constantly learning, and second guessing myself,but I can handle that. So far, so bearable. 2/?

What I find too much to bear is watching patients not get the help they need from the wider system.The NHS is dying, our politicians know it, & rather than putting out a crash call, they’re rubbing their hands with glee at the potential cash they’ll make from privatisation. 3/?

Every day, I meet people who are desperate for help. Who are doing all the right things to help themselves, but need support, need specialist care, and many of them have found their lives are on hold until they can get it. If they can get it. 4/?

Not that it should matter, but the vast majority have worked hard, paid their taxes, done their bit, and now need the health service they have paid into to care for them. But it can’t. Not in the way or at the time they need. And there is nothing they can do. 5/?

The days of knowing that if you called an ambulance, it would be there quickly are over. That’s not the fault of the service users or the amazing paramedics, or the call handlers. There simply isn’t the resource, the hospitals are full, the queues at ED are long. 6/?

So time and again, they come back to their GP. And yes, they struggle to get to see us too, because high demand and not enough of us. But we are still, most of the time, the first and most accessible port of call. As we should be. 7/?

I have had grown men in tears, begging for help, because the services they need can’t support them. That’s not the fault of the people running these services. They’re desperately struggling too.
So as a GP, we are effectively practicing with our hands tied behind our back. 8/?

We are trained to diagnose and treat, but also to signpost and refer. It’s hard to do the latter when we know they aren’t going to get anywhere, anything like when they are needed. That is the bit that breaks me. 9/?

We’re watching the NHS fall apart in front of us.I’m looking at private healthcare for me&my loved ones because I’m scared.I don’t want any more patients to come to my clinic begging for help because the system is failing them. It’s horrific for them& takes its toll on us. 10/10