The third-most challenging issue for GPs is that patients are not coming into the practice during the pandemic. Almost one in three GPs reported difficulty accessing adequate supplies of a COVID-19 vaccine and difficulty providing face-to-face services, such as complying with social distancing, ensuring adequate staffing and accessing PPE (Figure 7).
One in seven respondents (15%) reported a challenge under ‘other’ in a free-text box. Among those specifying an ‘other’ response, these included increased workload (14%), dealing with potentially COVID-19-positive patients (13%), patients’ stress levels (9%), vaccine hesitancy (8%), vaccine rollout issues (7%), access to stock to provide flu vaccinations (7%), and staff stress levels (6%).3