A CHRISTCHURCH GP surgery received 150 written complaints last year - and all were fully upheld.

Christchurch Medical Practice was the subject of almost 15 per cent of the complaints made across the whole of Dorset.

The practice, which has more than 20,000 patients, includes the Orchard and Barn surgeries at Purewell and medical centres at Salisbury Road in Burton and Ringwood Road, Bransgore.

The complaints came to light as statistics revealed a total of 1,074 complaints were made against doctor's surgeries in Dorset and 329 against dentists.

Many complaints related to difficult communication with surgeries, with the British Medical Association saying issues are caused by doctors too stretched to spend enough time with patients.

NHS Digital figures reveal complaints made in the Dorset CCG in 2018-19.

Of the 1,055 resolved – some were carried forward or left until the next year – 44 per cent were fully upheld, and 15 per cent partially upheld.

Across England, nearly 93,000 complaints were made against primary care givers in 2018-19. For GPs, they most commonly cited communications or staff attitudes, behaviour and values.

The British Medical Association’s GP committee chair, Dr Richard Vautrey, said: “This survey shows much of the dissatisfaction felt by patients stems from communication problems, rather than clinical errors, and doctors know that they simply don’t have enough time to spend with their patients and cope with rising demand, with the risk that communication issues could arise.

“All clinicians want to do their jobs safely, but need the time, resources and funding to be able to do that.”

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said: “GPs and their teams see over 1 million patients every day, and we actively encourage patients to submit feedback and raise complaints if they are not satisfied with any aspect of the care they’ve received so that we can continue to improve all aspects of our service.

“We know from the last independent GP patient survey that the great majority of patients have a good experience of general practice, and this demonstrates the hard work and dedication of GPs and their teams who are working tirelessly to deliver high quality care, in every corner of the country.

“As a profession, we are facing immense workforce pressures with a huge increase in patient numbers coupled with a shortage of doctors to care for them. Inevitably, this will occasionally impact on the service we can deliver, and this can be frustrating for patients – and for GPs