A petition launched earlier this year by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has gained 300,000 signatures and was handed in to Downing Street last week.

According to the poll carried out while the signatures were being collected, more than 75 per cent of the public believe that the NHS needs more doctors and that investment is needed in primary care.

Part of the College’s Put Patients First campaign, the petitions were collected by GP practices across the UK and, although well short of the College’s ambitious target of a million signatures, demonstrate the strength of public support and concern for general practice.

The poll found that more than half the respondents believed waiting times to see GPs were now at national crisis stage and 65 per cent fear that soaring workloads threaten the standard of care the profession can offer patients.

This has led the College to warn that the profession’s workforce will be in even more difficulty very soon, as it is predicted that more than a thousand GPs a year will be leaving the profession by 2022.

In addition, the College has published a manifesto ahead of the General Election calling for 8,000 new GPs. This also sets out 10 key actions that could save general practice.

A spokeswoman for the College said that unless there is substantial investment in expanding the GP workforce, general practice could go into meltdown, leading to problems within the profession and its ability to deliver decent patient care.

She added that such is the extent of the crisis that the time has now come for the Government to look at offering incentives to medical graduates who agree to train and practice in deprived areas or where there are too few GPs, in a similar way to the incentives offered to teachers who agree to teach in such areas.