Tuesday 7 June 2022 12:16 AM HALF of GPs plan on retiring by the age of 60: Survey finds trends now
Nearly half of GPs plan to retire by the age of 60, a shock poll suggests.
Unions said the number was 'concerning but not altogether unsurprising' due to their 'intense' daily workload.
A survey of more than 800 GPs in the UK for doctors' magazine Pulse found 47 per cent intend to leave the profession by the age of 60.
One in 10 family doctors, who earn an average of £100,000 per year, plan on retiring in their fifties and two per cent expect to quit before their 50th birthday.
Only 14 per cent of GPs said they planned to continue practicing into their late sixties, past the state pension age.
The most commonly cited reason for wanting to leave was burnout and workload, although issues about pensions also came up.
One GP said the sooner they leave general practice 'the better' and that they 'wouldn't recommend' the career path to anyone.
It comes amid a huge fallout over the lack of access to family doctors, with some areas of the country having just one GP for every 2,500 patients.
A survey of more than 800 GPs for Pulse magazine found around 47 per cent intend to retire when they hit that age
England's GP postcode lottery was laid bare today as official data showed some areas have half as many doctors per patient as others. Nuffield Trust analysis shows there are 39.5 GPs caring for every 100,000 people in Portsmouth. People in Thurrock have 40.3 family doctors for every 100,000 people in the area and in Hull there are 41.9 per 100,000
NHS data shows there have been nearly 4.5milion booked GP appointments where patients did not turn up since the start of the year, about 40,000 per day
Official figures show just 63 per cent of consultations were carried out in-person in England in April. At the current rate, it would take until September 2023 to reach the more than 80 per cent of appointments being made in person seen before the pandemic
The latest poll was based on the answers of 823 GPs across the UK.
A similar survey in 2020 found that 40 per cent of family doctors were planning earlier retirement, meaning the crisis is getting worse.
NHS England has lost the equivalent of 2,000 full-time GPs since 2015 and there are now an average of 2,200 patients per
