Demand for primary care services is high, with more patients and fewer practitioners leading to concerns that primary care physicians are struggling to cope with patient demand (1). General practice workload is seen as a potential risk to patients, simply because GPs are overworked (2). It may be time to be concerned about the long-term future of the family doctor—and to think personally, as well as professionally. These pressures clearly have an effect on those who currently practice in primary care. It is not just patients that are at risk; high levels of stress caused by unmanageable workloads are affecting practitioners too (3).

The phenomenon of ‘burnout’ has been widely studied in medicine, linking chronic job-related stress and exhaustion, depersonalization and frustration (4,5). High levels of burnout have been found amongst family doctors across Europe, with up to two-thirds of doctors surveyed experiencing feelings contributing to burnout including being emotionally drained and unable to deal with problems calmly (6). Similar patterns have been observed in the USA (7) and Canada (8) and repeated across further studies.....