DOCTORS closed their surgery for a day as part of a national protest at increasing workloads and lack of funding for GPs.

The Doctors' House in Victoria Road, Marlow, which has 12 doctors serving 24,000 patients and is the largest in Buckinghamshire, was the only surgery in the county to close on Tuesday.

Dr Jonathan Reggler, who has been a GP at the surgery for nine years, said: "We are becoming dangerously demoralised. For me it is because I can't deliver the quality of care I know I'm capable of. It is very demoralising when I can't provide the time my patients deserve.

"Sometimes you are faced with a seriously depressed patient and you can give them no more than five minutes. Someone has a difficult medical concern and you know you have to shove it all into a short session.

"We are practising what you might call abbreviated medicine, doing things that are absolutely necessary. The bits that give real quality to our patients have had to be managed out of the system.

"It is almost the humanity of it that has disappeared."

The doctors say that a lack of resources and increase in demand is starting to seriously affect the quality of the service.

The surgery was open throughout the day for emergencies and staff spent the time catching up on administration.