‘Rising satisfaction rates a testament to hard work of GPs’, says College Chair

College Chair Kamila Hawthorne responds to the 2025 NHS GP Patient Survey which found an increase in the proportion of patients reporting a good experience of their GP practice.

Professor Kamila Hawthorne, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “It is encouraging to see that patient satisfaction with GP services is on the rise. It’s a testament to the hard work of GPs and their teams to provide safe, timely care, delivering more consultations than ever before – more than a million a day - against a backdrop of intense workload and workforce pressures.

“While these figures show things are heading in the right direction, we know that there are still patients who are struggling to access the care they need, despite GPs are working to their limits and beyond. Demand for our care continues to outstrip our capacity: we only have 121 more fully qualified full-time GPs than we did at the end of 2019 as the number of registered patients has risen by over 3.5 million. We can’t carry on doing more with less, without substantial investment to recruit and retain more GPs some patients will still struggle to access the care they need.

“We’ve seen some encouraging proposals in the Ten Year Health Plan – including the recruitment of thousands more GPs - but we need more detail on how what is being proposed will actually be delivered for patients, and how it will be funded. We are looking ahead to the revised NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, due for publication later this year, as it will be a crucial opportunity to provide clarity on how the extra GPs promised can be recruited and retained – this will be fundamental in ensuring that GPs are able to do their jobs without burning out and that patient satisfaction rates continue to rise.”

Further information

RCGP press office: 0203 188 7659
press@rcgp.org.uk

Notes to editors

The Royal College of General Practitioners is a network of more than 54,000 family doctors working to improve care for patients. We work to encourage and maintain the highest standards of general medical practice and act as the voice of GPs on education, training, research and clinical standards.