The shortage of GPs across the UK has been well documented in Management in Practice (MIP). With Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for health, declaring 5, 000 GPs would be recruited by 2020, eyebrows where raised, and during the general election GP leaders sighed with disbelief at the rhetoric being churned out. But why was the profession in uproar about the government’s attempts to solve the GP crisis? In MIP’s summer edition the article Situation vacant got analysed the issue. Having spoken to GPs and practice managers from across the country, the general consensus was that looking to the future and encouraging junior doctors into general practice is not enough. It’s about what happens now. But how can this be done? There was no single answer as the problem varies across the UK. Val Hempsey, practice manager of Bridges Medical Practice, Gateshead, is well known for her unusual position as the only partner at the practice. But it has stood her practice in good stead against the problem general practice is fighting against. Her role as the only partner means GPs are not tied in as they are elsewhere. Controversial it may be, but it works nonetheless. Mike Dixon, partner at College Surgery Partnership, Devon recognised that his practice has survived and is able to obtain partners because of its desirable location. He claims that “going beyond core general practice” and working closely with the patient participation group has helped to create a sustainable model of general practice, therefore enticing partners. Although there are different models being set up across the country it was agreed by those interviewed in the article that making the practices attractive places to work will help to solve the issue now. Perhaps this is easier said than done. Chaand Nagpaul, chair of The British Medical Association’s general practice committee (GPC), argued the importance of practices being run by GPs. But with more and more GPs retiring the need to recruit from the next generation is an increasingly pressing matter. Nagpaul was clear about how difficult this will be. In the piece A united vision he says: “The truth is that when medical students and junior doctors visit a GP surgery as part of their training, far from the portrayal of lazy GPs working cushy office hours, they experience the total opposite of doctors overwhelmed from open-ended demand, working longer hours than many hospital shifts, and taking work and worries home with them at night and weekends.” There are strong opinions about how to solve the GP crisis, but in the meantime practices have to make do. Virginia Patania, practice manager at Tower Hamlet’s Jubilee Street surgery voiced her view on having to use locums to fill the void in the online article Locums: the solution or the problem.She portrayed the financial pressure that hiring freelance GPs places on the practice and the lack of long-term commitment that practices crave. Most of the GPs and practice mangers that were interviewed in MIP sight the multidisciplinary team as a way to address the extra workload. The autumn edition’s insight piece Sharing the work by Amanda Hensman–Crook explained how, as a musculoskeletal practitioner, her work eased the number of patients GPs have to see. Solving the GP shortage is long way off, but MIP has and will continue to include features and insight pieces on how to address the issue in the short and long-term.