FOUR out of five GP practices in Scotland say they are failing to keep up with demand from patients – despite a survey suggesting family doctors held more than 500,000 appointments in one week alone.

The figures come from a new survey of practices across Scotland by the British Medical Association. It also found that in 88% of practices, at least one member of staff has been subjected to verbal or physical abuse in the last month and 78% said the situation has worsened since May.

A total of 375 surgeries across Scotland took part in the BMA Scotland survey, which is 41% of GP practices. Those practices carried out 221,420 consultations between October 4 and 8, with BMA Scotland calculating that during the same week there were more than 500,000 GP appointments.

These would have been face-to-face, virtual and telephone appointments, but BMA Scotland stressed all the practices it surveyed carried out in-person appointments every day.

Dr Andrew Buist, chair of the BMA’s Scottish GP Committee, warned: “That number of appointments is straining our workforce and GPs and their teams simply cannot sustain this indefinitely.”

Among practices that took part in the survey, 83% said demand for appointments exceeds supply, with 42% saying it “substantially exceeded capacity”. More than one-quarter (28%) of practices had a least one GP position vacant, and BMA Scotland estimates that could mean as many as 225 whole-time positions are unfilled.

Buist said: “It comes as no surprise that the vast majority of GP surgeries are saying there is simply not enough capacity to meet demand. While this is in part, of course, due to increased demand, it is also clearly because we don’t have enough GPs.”

Buist said that in 2017 the Scottish Government committed to recruit 800 more GPs. He added that the results of the survey made this action “all the more urgent” and that there needs to be a “renewed focus on retention and recruitment of GPs”.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “We now have a record number of GPs working in Scotland with more per head than in the rest of UK. Trainee recruitment this year has so far been the most successful year of any of the last five, with 99% of GP training posts having been filled so far, with one recruitment round remaining, and we continue to develop our strategy for both recruitment and retention of our workforce.

“The NHS recovery plan highlights that staff recovery is critical to our collective ambitions for renewing our NHS and is supported by an investment of £8 million this financial year in measures to support the physical, mental and emotional needs of the workforce. Patients need to see the right person at the right time and these appointments aren’t just with GPs.

“That is why in 2021-22 the Primary Care Fund is increasing from £195m to £250m in direct support of general practice and will see expansion of multi-disciplinary teams in and around practices to ease GP workload and support access to a wide range of services for patients.

“As the Health Secretary recently announced, we will invest up to a further £28m in primary care services this year, which will underpin a range of measures including accelerated multi-disciplinary recruitment to support general practice.”

On abusive behaviour towards the GP workforce, she added: “Any kind of abuse directed towards our health service staff is totally unacceptable.”