AN “EXTRAORDINARY” increase in abuse aimed at GP teams is fuelling an exodus of family doctors, a leading medic warned today.

Primary care medical director for NHS England, Dr Claire Fuller, said GPs who leave the profession cite the workload and a lack of respect.

She said that the “increase in violence to members of primary care teams is extraordinary.”

Dr Fuller blamed “a constant narrative that GPs are not doing what they should be” in the mainstream media, despite evidence that “the experience is improving.”

“So it has now become acceptable to bash GPs, and that’s not OK,” she said.

“I’m hearing that from every GP I speak to … and people do leave because they’ve just had enough.

“It does matter when you keep reading in the press what a terrible job you’re doing when you’re exhausted and you’ve worked flat out and you haven’t had any lunch — people are working really hard, and something has happened that has changed in that narrative.”

She said that practice managers will get daily phone calls from a patient that says, “If I die today, it’ll be your fault,” while often working part-time and on low incomes.

A new survey of family doctors suggests some 84 per cent of GP teams have suffered verbal abuse and more than a quarter suffering physical violence from patients.

More one in three said they had suffered racial abuse and 15 per cent said that they had been the victim of sexual abuse.

Dr John Holden, chief medical officer at the the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland, which commissioned the poll, said: “Violence and abuse towards NHS staff can have a devastating impact on people already under intense systemic pressure, with many now having to take time off sick or deciding they have no option but to leave their profession completely.”