Stressed GPs Struggle to Cope Amid Rising Demand and Unsustainable Workloads

As of November 2025, the state of general practice in the UK remains precarious, with many doctors struggling to cope with rising demand and unsustainable workloads. According to the annual GP Voice survey, some 28% of GPs polled said they felt so stressed they could not cope at least once a week, although this was down from 40% a year earlier.

The RCGP chair, Professor Kamila Hawthorne, warned that the situation in general practice has become "increasingly hard to cope with" and requires "urgent action." One respondent, a GP of 27 years, reported working the longest hours they had ever done in primary care, with no improvement likely in the near future. Another complained that 10-minute appointments were often too short to properly address all the problems raised, leading to "a less satisfied patient and an overwhelmed doctor."

The number of fully qualified, full-time GPs has increased by 387 since the end of 2019. However, the number of registered patients grew by 3.7 million over the same period, meaning a typical GP is now responsible for 2,241 patients. This growing imbalance between supply and demand has pushed some GPs to switch to full-time private practice, as they find the "current funding position for NHS primary care and workloads on GPs in the NHS are both unsustainable."