Nearly 40% of GPs want to quit the profession within five years, a major national study reports today – highlighting the massive pressures on the service.

GP leaders said the figure – the highest during 20 years of the same survey – showed the measures to improve retention in general practice are still not working.

Yesterday NHS England announced a new £10 million fund aimed at improving GP retention.

The 39% of doctors looking for a way out of general practice last year represented a significant increase since the last survey in 2015 – when 35% reported the same point of view.

Manchester University researchers, who conduct the National GP Worklife Survey, said that overall it showed that there had been no improvement in stress levels in general practice.

The survey found that 62% of GPs over the age of 50 would like to quit within five years – a one percentage point increase in two years.

Among under-50s, 13% said they were likely to quit while 45% said there was no chance of them giving up general practice.

More than 90% of doctors reported high pressure from increasing workloads – blaming lack of time to do the job properly, paperwork, increasing patient demand and increasing workloads.

More than 2,000 doctors took part in the survey. Half of them had taken part in the 2015 survey.

There were some small increases in satisfaction with remuneration and levels of responsibility, the researchers reported.

Researcher Professor Kath Checkland said: “Although the declines in satisfaction seen between previous years has stopped, low satisfaction and high pressures have been sustained.

“The all-time high figure of 39% of GPs who say they intend to quit within 5 years is particularly worrying in terms of the possible implications it might have on recruitment, retention and patient care.”

The Royal College of GPs said the findings were “incredibly worrying.”

Chair Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said: “It certainly isn’t surprising, given the intense pressures family doctors are facing – something about which the College has long been raising concerns.

“Pressures in general practice have reached an all-time high; our workload has escalated by at least 16% over the last seven years, but the share of the NHS budget general practice receives is less than it was a decade ago, GP numbers are actually falling, and many hard-working GPs are simply burnt-out and exhausted.

“As this study shows, 20% of GPs are now working intensively for more than 60 hours a week. We’re trying to do more and more on less and less, and there is a limit beyond which we can no longer guarantee that we are practising safely.”

Dr Richard Vautrey, chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, called for practices to be able to set safe working limits.

He said: “While these figures are concerning, they are certainly not surprising, and provide yet further evidence of the scale of the acute workforce crisis in general practice.

“In the face of rising patient demand and increasing administrative burden, GP workload has reached a point where doctors feel they cannot provide safe, high-quality care.

“As noted in this report, doctors feel they can no longer do the job justice. Most will have dedicated decades of their lives to training and then practising, so it is unsurprising that many wish to leave when they are physically unable to do it to the high standards they set for themselves.

“It is imperative that practices must be able to set safe working limits both to ensure the best outcomes for their patients and to protect GPs’ own physical and mental health. The stress and pressure that excessive workloads and oppressive regulation are having on GPs is clear, with more than 1,000 doctors needing help from the NHS’s own GP Health Service in its first year of operation.

“As more GPs decide to leave the profession it will be patients who suffer. We know that they face unacceptably long waits for appointments, and this will only get worse as the number of GPs practising in surgeries across the country falls.”