Pulse carried out a snapshot survey of GPs on Monday 1 March, 2021 asking about their workload levels on that day – or, if they were not working, on a recent day the GP had spent in their usual practice.
We used Survey Monkey, it was kept open for a week until 8 March, and included around 20 questions, with no prize offered. The survey was completed in full by 1,418 GPs from across the UK.
Our methodology for analysing the data was to include all types of GP roles, as long as the respondent was answering in relation to their day spent in their usual practice (as opposed to, for example, a recent out-of-hours shift or a vaccination shift.)
For GPs providing answers in relation to a recent day in practice, we did not include those who referred to a weekend or those whose chosen day occurred before February 2021.
Our analysis included GPs working both full- and part-time – except for when reporting the average number of daily patient contacts for a full-time GP. In that case we defined a full-time GP as someone who told us they were scheduled to work for at least six hours doing clinical consultations on the day of the survey, and only included their responses.
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I am 58 years old & have not worked as a GP for the last 18 months. I am about to take up a specialist post for 2 days/week. My pension LTA is over the the £1m limit. Why would I go back as a GP when I am more interested in job satisfaction than income? I doubt I am alone.