GP workload and patient safety

Do you feel that you are safely providing care to your patients?The recent Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) 'GP Voice' survey has highlighted the tension clinicians are feeling between workload, pressures on time, and concerns about patient safety.Overall, 76% of GPs responding to the survey think that patient safety is being compromised by their excessive workloads.This boils down to a matter of time, with 60% of responders reporting that they don't have enough time to adequately assess and treat their patients during appointments.Kamila Hawthorne has called these results 'alarming', and it's hard to disagree with this when patient safety should be one of our absolute priorities. 1 How has increasing workload impacted on GPs and our sense of providing safe care to our patients?