The lack of opportunities for young GPs is the biggest threat facing general practice, Dr Laurence Buckman has said.

Its just the greed of few existing partners they dont want to share. Unfortunately they dont know if they are not ready to share somebody else will\(Private Providers)

I agree with Dr.Buckman.With no one willing to retire due to fortune they are earning the crisis is unlikely to change in near future.

Whilst not wishing to play devils advocate here I feel I must. I agree that GP partners are not willing to share the huge sums of money which are flooding into most GP practices. However it would appear that the greatest loosers in this game are the nurses who are actually meeting their GP's QoF targets and not getting rewarded for doing so in the majority of cases. Could it not be argued that infact rather than replacing GP's with even more GP's allowing history to ever repeat itself all over again. GP's should acknowledge the role their nurses undertake to allow them their increasingly lavish lifestyles. More nurse partners I think?

3 comments a) We have had a pay freeze for 3 years which translates to significant cuts for the partners. This is really beginning to bite b) I haven't met many salaried docs who are doing anything other than their salaried jobs to make themselves a more attractive proposition as a partner c) it's usually best not to fall out with each other - the enemy is, and will remain, the DoH

The growth in salaried general practitioners has happened since the 2004 contract.  It is shortsighted of equity partners to employ lower paid salaried partners as this lowers the expected mean which general practitioners earn and when the contract gave up the monopoly of the individual contract.  The aim is that eventually all general practitioners will earn this lower mean as a progressively larger number become employed.  It is unfortunate that some have to facilitate this process for short-term gain by employing salaried partners at lower rates.  This however is human nature and we should not have expected anything else.  The fault lies with the contract negotiators.  The profession has yet to pay the high price of this contract.

It was indeed also foolish to negotiate high financial rewards for tasks which anyone can do and by that I mean nurses.  Nevertheless patients still usually attend uninvited for diagnosis and initial disease management, requiring the intellect required for medical school admission and the skills learned therein and because of this, whatever the workload and allocated financial proportions health promotion and suchlike chronic disease management tasks remain piggybacked on to diagnosis and acute disease management and do not exist on their own. Because of this the idea of nurse partners is currently not viable.

Dr Ian MacGregor, equity share partner

why are the PCTs not advertisng the vacancies created by the retiring GPs rather than dispersing the patients? They have hidden agenda to destroy the small practices and make way for the Darzi clinics.

With the advent of new contract undoubtedly greediness creaped on in to the profssion replacing the retired partners with cheaper optins which became a threat to new graduates.