Dr Rob Dawson, a GP in Newcastle, says he has no choice but to refuse to take on new patients.

The doctors in his practice each look after more than 2,100 patients.

"At the moment in our practice, we are certainly hitting crisis point in the number of patients we have," he says.

We are being forced to try to offer a Rolls Royce service out of the back of a Mini

"The ideal number of patients per doctor would be in the region of some 1,500 to 1,800 patients.

Chaos

"In our practice now we have some 2,150 patients per doctor. But the primary care trust can in fact allocate patients until each doctor has 3,500 patients per doctor which clearly is entirely unacceptable and would lead to chaos."

Dr Dawson says the situation is preventing him from providing a proper service to patients.

"At the moment, we are being forced to try to offer a Rolls Royce service out of the back of a Mini.

"At the present time I feel patients are having to wait an unacceptably long time to see their doctor."

We cannot cope

Dr Dawson wants the government to stop setting targets and making promises to patients it says cannot be kept.

"It is time to get realistic and believe what the front line people are saying which is that we cannot cope and we will not cope in the short term.

"If the promises keep getting made and nothing is delivered then the service is going to collapse."

He is also sceptical about government promises to recruit thousands of extra GPs over the next few years.

"In the north of England, we are some 300 GPs short now. If we have to wait some nine years until those posts are filled we are going to be even further short as more and more of us leave because we simply cannot cope with the stress and strain of our day to day work."