Practices in Scotland have contact with a tenth of the country’s population weekly, according to a new survey highlighting the pressures on services.

More than 40% of practices responded to a British Medical Association survey, which found that 28% are short of at least one GP. Some 42% said demand ‘substantially’ exceeds their capacity – and 83% said they had more demand than capacity. 88% of practices said a member of staff had been subjected to verbal or physical abuse in the last month – with most saying this problem has worsened in the last six months.

BMA Scottish GP committee chair Dr Andrew Buist said: “It comes as absolutely no surprise that the vast majority of GP surgeries are saying there is simply not enough capacity to meet demand. Indeed 42% say capacity is substantially below what is required to meet demand for care. While this is in part, of course, due to increased demand, it is also clearly because we don’t have enough GPs. We have been saying this for some time, we believe it is now widely accepted and is why we have always welcomed the Scottish Government’s commitments to recruit the additional GP workforce.”

He added: “I appreciate difficulty getting an appointment can cause understandable frustration at times – but it can never be acceptable when this spills over into abuse, which our survey shows is still happening and indeed may be getting worse. Almost nine out of ten practices report that staff members have been verbally or physically abused in the last month, and nearly 80% of practices say this abuse has gotten worse since May.

“We need to be absolutely clear, once and for all, that this is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated. The Scottish Government has been extremely strong on this, which we welcome, and have worked closely with us to develop reasonable, open and honest messaging on face to face appointments. But we need all politicians to go on emphasising the position. No one – and least of all those people in caring services – should face abuse for doing the best they can in the extremely trying circumstances set out above.”