HARDLY a day goes by without GPs featuring in the headlines – and usually not in a positive light. Recent surveys on GP workload and access showed positive results – family doctors spending 40 per cent longer on each patient consultation and an 86 per cent satisfaction rating – but it became another excuse for rolling out the argument that GPs are “working less for more money”.

I am concerned that GPs seem to have become the whipping boys for everything that is found to be wrong with the NHS. This obsession with GP pay is wearing thin. It is exaggerated, unfair – and must be brought to an end.

Hardworking GPs in their practices will not come out to defend themselves – and why should they? So I will say it for them: doctors deserve their income.

The reality is that GPs are seeing more patients, providing more services and dealing with increasingly complex clinical problems. They are making a real difference to the lives of many patients and doing much more work to prevent fatal diseases, as demonstrated by reduced deaths from cancer and heart disease. On every working day 800,000 people will see their GP and 1.5 million prescriptions will be issued. If we did not have GPs, more patients would end up in hospital unnecessarily.

So why is there so much negativity about GP income? This income is a combination of many factors, including the achievement of demanding clinical targets – and is comparable with that of many professional groups.

Aside from the 10 years that we spend training and qualifying, we need to keep abreast and remain one step ahead of latest developments in the ever-changing world of medicine. Every diagnosis and decision we make is potentially life-changing for the individual patient and the potential impact of a mistake immense. How many other professions operate in such a high-risk or fast-moving environment?

Of course there are improvements to be made. GPs are not complacent and are keen to develop services more. The issue of appointments worries GPs as much as it does patients. Access to out-of-hours services is a legitimate concern and Primary Care Trusts – whose responsibility it is to organise care – need to make significant progress in improving standards.

Patients want quality care from GP teams whom they know and who know them and we want to do more to improve the care that we deliver to patients – but it does not help if all we get is GP bashing.

GP services are the best-in-class in the NHS family and they should be recognised as such. Instead of attacking Britain’s hardworking GPs, we should be asking searching questions about the extraordinary amounts of money that have been spent on endless NHS reorganisations in recent years – and the £500 million cost of external management consultants.

It is time to get beyond the headlines of “less work, more pay GPs” and concentrate on how we can work together to tackle the very real issues that concern patients. GPs are the glue that holds the NHS together. They are part of the solution to lasting improvements in the NHS, not the problem.

Professor Mayur Lakhani is chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners

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