[Mystic Mock]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...edication.html

Medical chief warns of growing risk of doctors misdiagnosing illnesses and giving out the wrong medication.

GPs are posing a threat to patients’ health, a medical chief has claimed.

Dr Maureen Baker, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, said ‘tired, overworked doctors’ are at risk of misdiagnosing illnesses and allocating the wrong medication.

She even compared visiting a tired GP to ‘voluntarily boarding a plane flown by a visibly tired pilot.’

The warning comes just weeks after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced a push towards a new GP contract providing seven-day patient care.

Mr Hunt said the ‘Monday to Friday culture’ in some sections of the NHS had ‘tragic consequences’ - with 6,000 people dying each year due to a lack of out-of-hours care.

The overhaul would require a new contract for doctors, who are currently allowed to opt out of working weekends and evenings thanks to a generous contract introduced by the last Labour government.

Introduced in 2004, the controversial contract also pushed the average GP salary to over £100,000.

But in a new report by the Royal College, Dr Baker insists GPs are still overworked with ‘no strategies in place to prevent and reduce the risk of patient harm’.

She adds: ‘Few of us would voluntarily board a plane flown by a visibly tired pilot or get on a train where we knew the driver had spent too much time at the controls - yet there are no systems or methods for addressing doctor and staff fatigue in general practice.’

Among a list of ways in which patients suffer from fatigued GPs, Dr Baker says doctors ‘mistake one patient for another’ and ‘give a patient the wrong medication’.

She recommended ‘limiting the hours worked and patients seen by clinical staff’, but a getting admitted this would stop some patients’ treatment.

Meanwhile, the Health Secretary said top doctors need to ‘get real’ about the need for a seven-day service.

High death rates at weekends have led Mr Hunt to promise to enforce changes to the out-of-hours system and bring in a fresh contract for newly-appointed GPs.
Dr Maureen Baker issued the warning
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It comes just weeks after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced a push towards a new GP contract providing seven-day patient care
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Dr Maureen Baker, pictured left, issued the warning just weeks after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, right, announced a push towards a new GP contract providing seven-day patient care

A shake-up could be in the works for existing consultants too, with their £200 an hour weekend deals phased out.

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘GPs do a fantastic job and we know they are under pressure as our population ages and more people live with long-term conditions.

‘That’s why we have committed to make 10,000 more staff available for general practice by 2020, including 5,000 more GPs.’

Dr Baker claimed there was a 3,300 shortfall in GP numbers in the UK, which will rise to 8,000 by 2020.