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The National GP Worklife Survey returns

18 September 2024
By Dr Benjamin Walker, Research Fellow in Health Economics, PRU HSSC


Calling all GPs

The GP Worklife Survey is back today for its 12th edition. If you are a GP, please check your inbox over the coming weeks in case you are one of the GPs selected at random to take part, and ask your colleagues to do the same.

What is the GP Worklife Survey?

The GP Worklife Survey is a national survey sent to GPs across the UK, asking questions about their working lives. The survey asks about things like job satisfaction, experiences of job pressures, and opinions on recent changes to general practice.

How can I complete the survey?

This edition of the GP Worklife survey will be entirely online. To complete the survey, please do the following:

  • Check your email to see if you have been selected at random to receive the survey.
  • Click the link provided and enter your unique code (provided in email).
  • Fill in the survey via smartphone or desktop.
  • After filling in, make sure to ask your colleagues to do the same.

If you are a GP who hasn’t received an invitation, but would like to complete the survey, please email: GP.Survey@manchester.ac.uk

Why does it matter?

It’s common knowledge that general practices in the UK are under a huge amount of pressure right now, with demands continuing to rise. This survey offers GPs the opportunity to report their on-the-ground experiences and make their opinions on general practice heard.

Importantly, the findings are shared with the DHSC team responsible for primary care policy, along with key stakeholders at NHS England, British Medical Association (BMA), and the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body.

Policy makers have consistently told us how much they value the insights into the realities of day-to-day life in general practice that this survey is able to provide.

In addition, the data from this survey will be used to conduct academic research into the determinants of GP pressures and job satisfaction. This allows us to answer important questions about the factors which affect GPs’ lives, and feed these into ongoing policy debates.

However, like all surveys, the credibility of our findings depends upon the number of responses that we get. So please, if you receive an invitation, it will take you no longer than 20 minutes to complete.

What did the last edition of the survey find?

The previous survey conducted in 2020/21 revealed that:

  • Overall average GP satisfaction decreased from 2019 to 2021, and that the average hours worked by GPs decreased over this same time span.
  • The percentage of GPs under 50 indicated a considerable or high intention to quit was at an all-time high.
  • GPs are working longer hours per session than the standard BMA salaried contract suggests, and that GPs working 6 sessions per week will, on average, be working what most would consider full time hours. [reference]

This type of evidence is vital to understanding and addressing the realities of general practice.

What will this edition ask about?

As well as asking standard questions which have remained the same since the first run of the survey in 1998 relating to job satisfaction and pressures at work, this survey has sections enquiring about continuity of care including how important to GPs, and asking their opinion on how equipped their practice is to deliver continuity of care.

The survey also offers GPs the chance to give their opinion of the new roles (such as physician associate, and clinical pharmacists) that are becoming more prominent in General Practice under the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme.

The more responses we receive to the survey, the more representative the data, which in turn improves the quality of the evidence found. Your experiences matter, and this form of robust independent evidence is important for policy makers. Completing this survey will help provide evidence on the state of General Practice.

The survey is run by a team based at the University of Manchester, on behalf of the National Institute for Health Research’s (NIHR) Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Systems and Commissioning (PRU HSSC, formerly PRUComm), and the survey is commissioned by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).

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