A DOCTOR who has been forced to close a 100-year-old surgery has warned that the “NHS is falling apart”.

Dr Dunia Al-Naemi (pictured) said she “might not get over the bereavement” of shutting Bedford Square Medical Centre, in Bloomsbury, next Tuesday because of a sudden rent rise, swingeing cuts to NHS funding and the burden of paperwork that has left her on the brink of “burnout”.

She begged forgiveness from her patients “from the bottom of her heart” but said keeping the practice open was “beyond my capability”.

Dr Al-Naemi said: “Unfortunately, the NHS is falling apart due to shortage of funding, and this has reflected negatively on the morale of the profession. General practice now is increasingly dispiriting and has changed dramatically in the last few years.

“The current changes within the NHS are the ever-increasing demands, more meetings, more paperwork, which is like climbing the Everest summit, longer hours of work but less time for my patients as we are overstretched beyond our limits.”

Former health secretary Andrew Lansley’s 2012 health reforms axed old-style primary care trusts and put doctors in charge of the NHS purse strings and bureaucracy. Dr ANaemi said: “I have had sleepless nights, woken up horrified about whether I have made the correct diagnosis, how to organise and reschedule my clinics to be able to attend the commissioning and provider meetings outside the surgery, also how to be able to free myself for in-house meetings with other health care professionals – the never-ending work. 

“I felt that I am heading for burnout as I was pouring more and more of myself into work with less time for myself and my family. We hear on the news that many doctors are retiring early, leaving the partnership, emigrating, and more surgeries are closing down.”

She added: “The current climate is no more small surgeries as they cost the NHS a lot of money. The idea is to have mega-surgeries and in my view the small family practice will vanish in few years’ time. It will become like going to a big supermarket.”

Labour shadow health secretary Andy Burnham at the party conference this week said he wanted GPs to become salaried professionals, working as employees of larger organisations, such as hospitals.

The Bedford Square Medical Centre was one of the surgeries threatened with closure when the former primary care trust was proposing a privately-run “polyclinic” super-surgery for south Camden.

There are two doctors at Bedford Square and a practice nurse. Medical students often train at the surgery, which is open five days a week and runs asthma, child immunisation, travel health and yellow fever clinics as well as in-house minor surgery. The surgery is believed to have been there for more than 100 years.

More than 3,600 patients on the list have been forced to register at nearby practices. NHS England admitted it had contacted patients by letter only this month about the unsettling change.

The newly-formed health authority, run by former University College London provost Malcolm Grant and former Camden Council chief executive Moira Gibb, said the premises had become “no longer suitable or sustainable as a GP practice”, adding: “We wrote to all patients earlier this month advising them to register with a new practice and providing information on how to do so. 

“We are monitoring how patients are re-registering and note that many have already found a new GP. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

In a post on the NHS Choices website, a patient said: “We have belonged to this practice for 34 years. We’ve now joined another practice but we’re sorry to have to leave and we’d like to thank the GP and all the staff for the service they have provided for us over the years.”

Dr Al-Naemi said: “All I want to say to my patients is that I love you all and you will be staying in my heart and mind. I hope you forgive me for this as it was beyond my capability, and wish you the very best from the bottom of my heart.”