The British Medical Association (BMA) has said the South West is facing a crisis in recruiting family doctors.

It is warning there are not enough new GPs to replace those who are due to retire, and some rural practices may be forced to close.

The region's new Peninsula Medical School is being seen as one way to begin tackling the shortfall.

But there are still concerns some village surgeries may be forced to close before current students qualify.

We're going to have more retired doctors and have less of our home-trained doctors to replace them with

Dr Peter Joliffe

Dr Stephen Miller has been a village GP in Shebbear in north Devon for 16 years.

He is aiming to retire in 10 years, but already finding someone to take over is causing concern.

It could mean his single-handed practice merging with others in neighbouring villages.

Dr Miller said: "That has practical problems, such as where are you going to put the surgery.

"Wherever it goes, patients would have to travel considerable distances to see doctors."

The problem is the country does not have enough new GPs coming through the ranks.

It takes 10 years to train a GP

Locum GP Sheila Fitzpatrick qualified two years ago, but even she would not consider doing the job full-time.

General practice is the poorest paid speciality in medicine and it is expanding.

Dr Fitzpatrick said: "It's a lot of hard work and long hours. And the appreciation of the work that GPs do, I think, has gone down.

"There's tremendous pressure to keep meeting new targets, and, as a result of that, I think a lot of people are run ragged."

The BMA says 10,000 new family doctors are needed for England and Wales to meet demand.

Home-trained doctors

Dr Peter Joliffe of the Devon Local Medical Committees said: "One of the problems we have now is that there's more for doctors to do, there's more for their teams to do.

"We need more nurses in general practice, we need more GPs.

"And at the time when we need more, we're going to have more retired and we have less of our home-trained doctors to replace them with."

Despite the fact the Peninsula Medical school may help alleviate a shortage, it takes 10 years to train a GP.

Over that time the warning is some small village surgeries may be forced to close.