Save our souls

Let’s dispense with the normal pleasantries: what the hell is going to happen to all our recently qualified general practitioners? Locum work is drying up, out of hours rota sessions are full, the only permanent jobs are salaried positions, and GP partnerships seem to be coming to an end. Why is all this happening?

The reasons are several. In the mid-1990s a shortage of doctors led to an expansion of medical schools’ intake; this expanded cohort of doctors is now completing specialist training. Furthermore, after the Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) debacle in 2007 a …