Workplace pressures are forcing doctors to leave medicine, GMC warns

Urgent action must be taken to break the vicious cycle of unmanageable workloads and burnout that is causing doctors to quit medicine, the General Medical Council has warned.

One of the key findings of the regulator’s report on The state of medical education and practice in the UK workplace experiences1 was that more doctors than ever say they are likely to leave the UK profession and had taken steps towards doing so (excluding doctors of retirement age who were planning to retire).

The report drew its findings from a 2022 survey of UK doctors, as well as qualitative research involving interviews with doctors, trainers, and senior stakeholders from UK healthcare organisations.

In 2022, 15% of the 4269 doctors who responded to the survey said they had taken steps to leave UK medicine, up from 7% of 3386 who responded to the survey in 2021.

The report also found that doctors were struggling more at work than they had been the year before. Half of doctors (50%) were satisfied in 2022, down from 70% in 2021, it said.

In 2022, more doctors reported working beyond their rostered hours on a weekly basis (70%, up from …