PATIENTS are being turned away from surgeries or having to wait days for appointments because stressed-out doctors are packing their bags, GPs claim.

Doctors say too much paperwork and poor back-up from local health chiefs are driving GPs out of the NHS. Dr Nigel Higson, of Goodwood Court Surgery, Hove, says staffing is sometimes so thin that health centres in Brighton and Hove have to refuse new patients, or delay seeing them. Today his claims were backed by Brighton GP Dr Sue Lipscombe, of Lewes Road Surgery, Brighton, who said: "There is two feet of paperwork on my desk and I haven't got the time I want to spend with my patients. There's so little time to do what we were trained to do." And Dr David Farrow, secretary of the East Sussex Local Medical Committee, said: "There is a very, very big problem with recruitment and retention. "One of the reasons for increasing patient demand is the creation of the Patient's Charter, which gives people rights but doesn't balance it with responsibilities or funding." Dr Higson, who set up his own practice last year, says several GPs have retired early or taken long-term sick leave because of work pressure. And even he has had to close his patients' list and is now working a 12-hour day in a desperate bid to meet demand. He said: "Experienced GPs are being lost. And when they are replaced, you are getting in more young ones who are less willing to work longer hours. "People are either not being registered or they're having to wait days for appointments, even for things like repeat prescriptions. This isn't the kind of service we should be giving. "I'm getting to a bit of a stressed level myself, with too many patients. I've already started working from 8.30am to 8.30pm to fit in 12 more appointments a day." He added that bureaucracy was being made worse by the system's failure to co-ordinate patient files centrally on computer. But Maddie Mayhew, spokesman for East Sussex, Brighton and Hove Healthy Authority, said: "We appreciate that at times GPs may be under stress, and if we are approached we will do whatever we can to support them with specific problems. "We are not aware of any problems with patients not being able to get a GP but there are times when lists will be closed while GPs are recruited." She added that the authority was trying to work more closely with GPs and if any patients had trouble finding one, they should call the authority for advice.

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