A DESPERATE Whitehaven GP who admits he's "not making any money'' has turned to tattoo removals to boost his income.

Dr Tom Ickes said he hasn't taken a holiday in four years as he tries to run his practice which has 1,800 patients. He is now offering other services as normal GP work no longer pays all his bills.

And he believes the traditional GP surgery set up will not be viable in the future.  

Dr Ickes, of Whitehaven Medical Centre, has been doing tattoo removals for the past five months, as well as HGV and taxi driver medicals to earn extra money. He admitted he hasn't been on holiday with his family as it is too expensive to recruit a locum to cover his surgery.

"If I did tattoo removal full-time, I could earn five times more an hour than I do now,'' he told The Whitehaven News.

Disillusioned doctors and an inability to recruit new GPs will see the need for primary care to be "reinvented'' he explained and said: "Most patients' conditions could be dealt with by a nurse practitioner.''

He says this would work "as long as nurse practitioners had access to a GP to ask further questions on the complex cases. That would also mean there are two sets of eyes on a problem''.

He believes the future of GP surgeries would eventually include more nurse practitioners and pharmacists. "It will have to be that way."

Dr Ickes also said if people were not happy with their GP surgery they could move. "Patients can change surgeries if they don't want to wait weeks for appointments,'' he said. "My patients will be seen within two days. I could take on an extra 1,000 patients.

"Patients complain about the waiting times but they could move.'' He said he had "many times'' offered to take up the daily slack from other busy GP surgeries but has had "no take up".

Dr Ickes said with the current GP system, doctors are paid for the number of patients. regardless of the service. "For example, a surgery could start out with 10 GPs and 18,000 patients, which would be fine,'' he added. But if four GPs leave, then the waiting times increase but the GPs are paid more because they have more patients, he added.