Survey finds most UK GPs lack time for detailed preventive care

Three out of four UK family doctors say they do not have enough time to provide preventive healthcare, according to a survey by the Royal College of General Practitioners. The survey of 2,316 GPs found that 75 per cent were too time-pressed to offer measures such as lifestyle advice and vaccinations. Doctors also said busy consultations limited opportunities to discuss smoking, weight loss, sleep, exercise and medication reviews.

The college said intense demand and ten-minute appointments were squeezing out conversations aimed at helping patients remain well in the longer term. Professor Victoria Tzortziou Brown, the college’s president and a GP in east London, said doctors had to prioritise symptoms and findings requiring immediate investigation or treatment. She said the time needed to examine a patient’s circumstances more fully and provide tailored support was often lost.

She added that advising someone to stop smoking was different from having enough time to explore whether the person wanted to quit, what had made it difficult and what support might help. Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of the King’s Fund health thinktank, called the findings alarming. She said GPs were increasingly overwhelmed and could miss opportunities to identify conditions that might be treated earlier.

The RCGP said the NHS needed more GPs and longer consultation time if the government’s ambition to shift healthcare from sickness to prevention was to succeed. A separate survey found that 64 per cent of UK voters trusted family doctors for healthy-living advice, more than trusted the NHS website, pharmacists, relatives, AI chatbots or social media influencers. The Department for Health and Social Care was approached for comment, according to the source.