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You should avoid seeing your doctor after this time

GPs are being faced with stressful workloads. [Photo: Getty]
GPs are being faced with stressful workloads. [Photo: Getty]

When booking your next GP appointment, you should probably push for a morning appointment.

Many doctors feel so ‘drained’ by the afternoon that their performance may be compromised.

This is according to research by Pulse magazine, which found more than half of family doctors believe they are working above safe limits.

The publication took a “snapshot survey” on 11 February, in order to gauge an average day in the life for British GPs.

Out of 1,681 GPs polled, the average doctor said they were treating 41 patients a day – but believed a total of 30 would be more safe.

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One in 10 were treating 60 patients a day – twice as many as the estimated “safe” number.

One Hertfordshire GP told Pulse: "There is a point where I feel cognitively drained; after about 20 patients, there is not an iota of empathy left."

Dr Jonathan Harte, a Nottingham based GP, told the publication the “risks” increased throughout the day.

He said: "By lunchtime, I felt on the edge and risked missing urgent tasks and contacts, thus affecting patient safety.”

Dr James Howarth, a GP in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, said he had dealt with 124 patients on the day of the snapshot survey.

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“This workload creates patient safety risks. There are risks around having multiple patient notes open because we're helping a nurse out with hers, or we're 30 minutes late so we see the next patient while finishing the notes of the last,” he said.

"We might forget consultant details, plans and actions, or prescribe for the wrong person, use the wrong labels on blood tests, and so on."

He admitted to having sent a blood test using the wrong patient details due to the undue pressure his work placed upon him.

"I spotted it in time, but how many do we fail to spot?" he added.

The worrying statistics come amid news today that there is a sustained fall in GP numbers in the UK for the first time in years.

GPs per 100,000 people have fallen from 65 in 2014 to 60 last year, according to an analysis by Nuffield Trust think tank on behalf of the BBC.