The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) attended the Westminster launch of a new campaign which aims to improve patients’ experience of general practice.
Dr Sarah Jacques, GP co-lead, represented DAUK at the event to launch the Solve the Maze campaign, a joint drive by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and the Patients Association.
It brought together policymakers, clinical leaders, patient advocates, and frontline clinicians.
The campaign has three main aims:
- Every patient should be able to navigate their care
- Every patient should be able to see their GP when they need to
- Every patient should be able to access information about their care
Dr Jacques said: “At DAUK, we strongly support the core message of this campaign.
“Frontline GPs see daily how complex, fragmented pathways create unnecessary stress for patients and increase administrative burden for clinicians.
“An NHS that is easier to navigate is essential not only for improving patient experience, but also for enabling GPs to spend more time delivering clinical care rather than managing bureaucracy.”
Professor Victoria Tzortziou Brown, RCGP chair, said: “Decades of underfunding and poor workforce planning have left GP numbers far behind where they need to be, and it’s our patients who suffer when they have to wait too long, particularly for an appointment with a GP they know and trust, for appointments that are too short.
“The government has committed to ‘thousands’ more GP but we now need to see a detailed, fully funded plan to recruit, employ and retain the GP workforce patients need.”
Read Dr Jacques’s blog on the launch on the DAUK Substack.
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