YET again, the NHS is shouting out loud that there is chronic shortage of doctors.

Primarily, those that choose to take on the responsibility of being a GP Well, the reasons why this particular scenario continues unabated is straightforward.

Firstly, the EU decided to limit the hours everyone should work per week - including doctors, and secondly, partly because of this EU directive, a past Labour government allowed UK doctors to negotiate a deal whereby they only work a five day week.

Where once upon a time all doctors/GPs were on call 24 hours a day 365 days a year.

Except of course, when on holiday or sickness etc.

But, the most important fact of why there is a shortage of GPs in particular, is because of what is known as the General Medical Council’s “revaluation process”.

Every doctor has to spend inordinate amounts of time to fill numerous forms to ‘re-validate’ their working lives if they wish to continue in the medical profession.

Suffice to say, most doctors resent having to do this.

So as a direct result of the GMC’s half-witted “revalidation” procedure, many doctor’s when they retire can never ever step in to help out at the surgery they once worked at (like they used to do). No locum work either.

You see, some retired doctors would like to keep their hand in - helping out when a surgery demands it.

But they can’t and won’t.

All because those ‘clever’ folks at the GMC thought it a great idea to prevent hundreds of doctors from working again once they retire - and they probably won’t, because if they do, they will have to re-validate their licence to practice and fill up more forms and so on.

Mind you, I have a good idea to solve the doctor crisis almost immediately.

Any nurse who has a good few years medical experience, can, by a stroke of a pen be henceforth called a ‘doctor’.

By doing so, not only will the nurses now called ‘doctors’ be very happy strutting about their surgeries with stethoscopes hanging around their necks - and busy writing out prescriptions without recourse to a qualified doctor, it will save millions of pounds of taxpayers money not having to train hundreds of people wanting to be doctors/GPs.

Problem solved.

ANDREW MARTIN

Kitchener Road Weymouth

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