GPs' lives are commonly regarded as stressful and concern is often expressed about levels of morale in the NHS in general. GPs' morale is typically described as:
‘… a current concern in the United Kingdom because of difficulties with recruiting and retaining the workforce needed to meet the targets of a primary care led NHS’.1
As part of a sabbatical in 2004 I interviewed 19 registrars I had trained in my inner-city practice. During our conversations we talked, inter alia, about morale. While the concept of morale is familiar, and trusts are expected to ‘survey staff morale and motivation’, measuring it is not a well-defined science. I, therefore, simply asked each doctor to anecdotally describe their own current morale on a scale of 0–10.
The results: Most ex-registrars (age range …