BURNHAM and Berrow Medical Centre has been struggling to recruit GP's for several years, the surgery has revealed.

The centre on Love Lane said its spent 'thousands of pounds' trying to recruit GP's through advertising and recruitment fairs but have had limited success.

Debbie Hale, management partner at Burnham & Berrow Medical Centre, said the GP recruitment issues stretch across the NHS and not enough new doctors have been coming in to the system to replace GP's that have left.

She said: "We have spent thousands of pounds on locum GP's and whilst we are fortunate to have very good locums working with the practice they are more expensive than either GP partners or salaried GP's and there is an issue with continuity of care when they work more on an ad hoc basis.

"We organise locums several months in advance and do our best to ensure sufficient sessions are planned each day, however, this summer was particularly difficult with very few Locums available and this has had a knock-on effect whilst we try to catch up."

In a bid to tackle the issue the practice said it has 'adopted new and innovative ways' to look after its patients so more time can be freed up for GP's to care for patients who really need it.

Mrs Hale said the practice is continuing to work hard to recruit more GP's to ensure patients get the care they need.

"A large number of patient contacts do not need to be with a GP and are more appropriate with another healthcare professional," Mrs Hale said.

"We have a brilliant healthcare team including long term condition nurses, treatment room nurses, health care assistants, pharmacists and paramedics as well as an excellent and supportive admin team.

"We are continuing to look at ways to manage our patients care that is safe and effective whilst continuing to actively recruit to GP vacancies.

" Somerset CCG have recognised the challenge of providing healthcare to an increasing population going forward and have developed the “Fit for my Future” project to work with local people in Somerset and healthcare providers to identify different ways of managing this."

For more information about 'Fit For My Future' visit www.fitformyfuture.org.uk/)