Some GP practices have refused to complete this years’ NHS England staff survey as part of collective action.
Last year, the commissioner extended its annual staff survey – which covers all trusts in England – to general practice for the first time.
Pulse revealed exclusively that last year’s General Practice Staff Survey (GPSS) received responses from over 18,200 GP practice staff, which represented 16% of the total eligible workforce population in the 21 ICBs, and that practices scored highest on being ‘compassionate and inclusive’.
However, during a webinar last month, deputy medical director for primary care Dr Kiren Collison acknowledged that this year ‘some people have declined to fill in the survey as part of collective action’.
As revealed by Pulse, collective actions that practices focused on included declining non-contractual work, refusing to engage in advice and guidance, limiting patient contacts to 25 a day per GP and declining to sign new contracts with NHS England or the local ICB.
Dr Collison also said that one of the issues that ‘comes through loud and clear’ from practices taking collective action is around bureaucracy and interface with hospitals.
She said: ‘What I wanted to talk about very briefly was collective action. I know it’s been mentioned once already today in this webinar.
‘Many of you may already be involved in it, or thinking about it. One of the things that comes through loud and clear from the actions in collective action is interface issues.
‘It comes up a lot, whether it’s about advice and guidance, referral forms and work transferring between secondary care and primary care.
‘A lot of this is around the interface, if we can really drive forward the work we’re doing in our local systems around the interface, I think we can resolve a lot of the issues, and we’ve already done a lot of laying of good foundations when it comes to working at the interface.’
During the webinar, Dr Collison asked deputy director of staff engagement Zoe Evans to explain why it is important that GPs decide to take part in the staff survey.
Ms Evans said: ‘We know that a key enabler of employee engagement is employee voice. And if employees can have a voice and be able to respond and provide their point of view, and more importantly, to have that point of view listened to and acted on, it provides really strong foundations for a good, strong culture of safety in the workforce.’
Collective action began on 1 August after GP partners voted in favour of taking action in protest against contractual terms and funding.
After the BMA announced the results of its non-statutory ballot, which saw 98.3% of GP partners voting in favour of taking collective action, NHS England said that ICBs should make sure that practices are continuing to meet contractual requirements during the action.
Pulse exclusively revealed that almost half of England’s GP practices are already taking some form of collective action, with the most popular option being limiting the number of daily patient contacts.
And GP practices have been encouraged to share data with the BMA on how they are taking part in collective action every week.
