NEWS: GPs struggle amid prescription shortages

As reported by MIMS, Nearly 90% of GPs report severe impacts on safe practice due to medication shortages, with many considering leaving the profession

A total of 88% of GPs responding to a survey from the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland (MDDUS) believe ongoing shortages of prescription medicines are impacting their ability to practise safely, with 45% of respondents having witnessed their patients’ health suffer as a result.

Three quarters (74%) of GP respondents said they experience ‘moral distress’ – knowing the ethically correct action to take, but being constrained from taking it – at work due to the impact of medicine shortages, with 30% reporting moral distress every day at work and a further 37% suffering from it several times a week.

 

Further information

Another 74% said they are regularly faced with angry or aggressive patients when they can’t have the first-line drugs they need, which leaves 30% of respondents feeling anxious about coming to work to face such situations. Almost one in five (17%) GPs suggested they have considered leaving the medical profession as a result of the ongoing issues.

One GP respondent told MDDUS that the process of dealing with medicine shortages ‘makes you second guess yourself frequently’.

‘Clinical decisions are now being influenced by this lack of medications which leads to increased sense of worry,’ they added.

 

Workload

The survey of 397 GP members of MDDUS from across the UK – conducted between 15th March and 14th April 2024 – found that 94% of respondents had seen their workload increase due to medicine shortages.

Four in five (83%) said there was a lack of guidance on how to advise patients about the shortages, including timescales for when the medicine they need will become available.

The most difficult medicines to get hold of over the past year have been: hormone replacement therapy, including oestrogens, progestogens and testosterone (86%); diabetes medicines (GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic) (80%); epilepsy medicines (42%); and cardiac medicines (30%), according to the survey results.

 

Shortages crisis

As the impact of medicines shortages continues to impact healthcare professionals and patients, MDDUS is calling on governments across the UK to urgently investigate better, more compassionate ways for pressurised medics to seek wellbeing help and speak out about their mental health concerns.

Dr John Holden, chief medical officer at MDDUS, said: ‘We hear regularly from doctors about the enormous pressures they face every day in the NHS, but the crisis around medicine shortages is making things even worse.

‘It is not uncommon for doctors to contact us when they feel they’re at the very edge of their ability to cope with these pressures.’

Whoever becomes the new health secretary after the general election, ‘must urgently prioritise NHS workforce issues – including practitioners’ own mental health and wellbeing’, Dr Holden added.

Last month, the Health and Social Care Committee concluded that ongoing medicines shortages are not only having a major impact on patients and healthcare professionals, but threaten to erode public confidence in community pharmacy and undermine the government’s flagship ‘Pharmacy First’ scheme.

Meanwhile, James Davies, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society director for England, told MIMS that pharmacists are ‘spending an inordinate amount of time, either chasing stock, trying to procure stock or chasing prescribers to get them to prescribe something different’, while also dealing with anxious and angry patients.