Government bombshell means it’s the season of badwill

Copperfield on how the Government’s contract negotiation bombshell means it is game over for general practice’s goodwill

So that was a marmalade-dropper, wasn’t it? I’ll leave the medicopolitical analysis of the BMA losing its exclusive contract negotiating role to those who know what they’re talking about i.e. the editor.

What I can give you however, is the gut reaction of someone just trying to get on with the job while increasingly bewildered by what is going on around it. Which is that the Government is sending us GPs a very clear message, with a stance so aggressive and demeaning that it seems to want to settle it outside. And in that pub brawl, it stands to lose more than some front teeth.

By which I mean, come and have a go if you’re hard enough, and say goodbye to our goodwill. For as long as I’ve been a doctor, the NHS has relied on the willingness of its staff to go the extra mile. In recent years, though, we’ve seen that goodwill dissipate in secondary care; and now this corrosion is likely to spread throughout general practice.

I’ve aways routinely worked way beyond my contracted hours, as have all my colleagues. I reckon about a quarter of the work I currently do is in my own time, for nothing. It’s actually getting worse as technology increasingly blurs the work/home divide.

But this goodwill goes beyond the individual. It’s a truism that general practice is the bedrock of the NHS – because it is true. ‘Propping up the NHS’ is no longer a metaphor. Just off the top of my head, I can cite: our local endocrine department falling apart; the lipid service being suspended indefinitely; 15-month waits for ABPIs; urgent IBD care being non-existent; palliative care not coping, the community cardiac failure team drowning; and so on through all secondary care and community services.

The overflow is absorbed by us – because we can do everything, and we care about everyone. But not anymore, if my reading of this latest bombshell is correct. By provocatively engaging with consumer groups, ivory towers and unrepresentative organisations to shape our contractual future, the screamingly crass message from the Government appears to be this: It believes it can get better value for money from GPs.

I’m so furious at this display of staggering ignorance, arrogance and stupidity that I cannot locate in my sweary-lexicon a suitably excoriating expletive. Certainly not one printable here. You want value for money from GPs? When you’re already getting everything and more for nothing and less?! You are, to bring us back to pub vernacular, ‘having a laugh’.

Put down that shattered glass, take a bar stool and listen to us about proper funding, less meddling  and a conciliatory approach. It’s the season of goodwill, after all, so let’s drink to that. Though listening to you, maybe you’ve had enough already.

Also, I really do want to punch you in the face.

Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex