‘What good is a workforce plan without a workforce?’

Dr Margaret Ikpoh questions how the Government will be able to deliver its refreshed workforce plan with an ever-increasing number of unhappy GPs leaving the NHS

The long-awaited refreshed NHS Long Term Workforce Plan promises to reshape healthcare delivery over the next decade.

But there is a stark challenge: who will be left to deliver it?

It feels as if we are witnessing, in slow motion, a national sleepwalk into a deepening workforce crisis. General practice is haemorrhaging doctors – not just to burnout and workload – but to a system that increasingly feels like it no longer values them. Chronic underfunding, practice closures, low morale, and growing hostility (including rising abuse and racism) are all pushing many to question their future here.

Week on week, I have become increasingly dismayed by the increasing requests I receive for professional references from colleagues seeking to work across the pond. Canada currently tops the list – as also shown by Pulse’s recent survey – but with some states in the USA now relaxing entry barriers, even a difficult political climate is no longer enough to stop the growing migration wave.

The consequences? Well, fewer GPs means longer waits, less continuity, more pressure on hospitals, and a hollowing out of frontline care. No 10-year health plan can succeed if there are no doctors left to implement it.

And before the AI brigade come for me: Yes – technology can of course offer support, but it cannot replace the empathy, clinical wisdom, and patient relationships that define general practice.

If this workforce plan is to be more than an illusion, then the Government must urgently tackle the importance of ensuring an improved contract, support the vital role of GP partnerships, restore respect for the role of GPs, and actively retain the skilled professionals we already have.

However, any proposed delivery of this plan will need the profession to come together, as a lack of a collaborative approach within practices or even professional bodies will only deepen the crisis. It is only through a united front, mutual support, and a shared commitment to our patients and each other that we can turn this vision into reality.

So whilst we continue to wait for this plan, we have been drip fed some detail that by 2035 there will be fewer staff that will be ‘better treated and more motivated and have better training’ than projected in the Long Term Workforce Plan published two years ago.

This is somewhat bizarre given national population projections over the next 10 years. So, if there is acknowledgement of poor treatment, lack of motivation and training opportunities to develop one’s career, then why not just start implementing what is needed today? Retention is key.

Otherwise, we risk a possible mass exodus if we don’t and we will end up wasting resources redesigning a workforce plan with no one left to deliver it.

Dr Margaret Ikpoh is a GP in Holderness, East Yorkshire. You can find her on X @docmagsy