The health care system has been in the news all week. Particularly the long ambulance waits outside A&E departments and delays releasing patients into social care.

The President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Andrew Boyle, told the Today programme: “These problems we’re seeing with hospitals and ambulance emergency services are markers of a whole system problem.”

The GP is often a patient’s first contact with the health care system - how are these issues affecting one of the key front lines in NHS?

The Today programme’s Justin Webb spoke to Dr Rachel Warrington, a GP in Knowle in Bristol and Dr Kamilla Hawthorne, Chair of the Royal College of GPs – herself a GP in South Wales

(Image, GP surgery, Credit, Jeff Overs/ BBC)