By Quite what, may I ask, is the point of the General Practitioner – or GP as the modern day rendition of the one-time "family doctor" is familiarly known?
If you can get an appointment for two weeks’ time, you count yourself lucky these days. Then it will be to find it is with a doctor you have never seen before, who doesn't know you from Adam, and who will spend more of the ten-minute session looking at her computer screen for your notes than at you. If you walk out with a new prescription or a repeat, you’ve done well.
Our dissatisfaction with GPs is at an all time high, according the most recent GP Patient Survey.
We don’t like them and it seems that doctors don’t like us much either. They complain of the number of people they have to see, the intensity of their work and burn out.
Mind you, only one in ten trainee doctors, it was revealed yesterday, have any intention of putting this to the test – though they have no qualms about benefiting from their expensive taxpayer-funded training.
Yes, only one in ten trainee doctors plan to work full time for a GP practice, a Kings Fund Report revealed. It should come as no surprise.
For many years fewer than 10 per cent of doctors were female. The average family doctor was a man, like the one I had in the 1960s – his surgery at the back of his house, open all hours, closing only when he was out visiting patients. He knew everyone in his large village practice personally – kids, parents, grandparents, warts and all. His word and common sense were law. In return for his commitment came respect for his authority and significant social standing.
Source: GP Patient Survey 2016
Edited by AA
If you can get an appointment for two weeks’ time, you count yourself lucky these days. Then it will be to find it is with a doctor you have never seen before, who doesn't know you from Adam, and who will spend more of the ten-minute session looking at her computer screen for your notes than at you. If you walk out with a new prescription or a repeat, you’ve done well.
Our dissatisfaction with GPs is at an all time high, according the most recent GP Patient Survey.We don’t like them and it seems that doctors don’t like us much either. They complain of the number of people they have to see, the intensity of their work and burn out.
Mind you, only one in ten trainee doctors, it was revealed yesterday, have any intention of putting this to the test – though they have no qualms about benefiting from their expensive taxpayer-funded training.
Yes, only one in ten trainee doctors plan to work full time for a GP practice, a Kings Fund Report revealed. It should come as no surprise.
For many years fewer than 10 per cent of doctors were female. The average family doctor was a man, like the one I had in the 1960s – his surgery at the back of his house, open all hours, closing only when he was out visiting patients. He knew everyone in his large village practice personally – kids, parents, grandparents, warts and all. His word and common sense were law. In return for his commitment came respect for his authority and significant social standing.
Today over 60 per of GPs are women, most of whom exercise their family-friendly part-time work entitlement. Their patients are lucky indeed if they get the chance to get to know them. They don’t seem to mind at all that they don’t know their patients.
Now, it appears, their remaining male counterparts have been corrupted by their feminised work practices. They too only plan to work part time – in order to take up lucrative locum work as soon as they have qualified.
No wonder some GP practices no longer even try to man themselves to stay open.
When the less popular ones are closing down at lunch time, for full afternoons and weekends, it begs the question why keep them open at all?
Now, it appears, their remaining male counterparts have been corrupted by their feminised work practices. They too only plan to work part time – in order to take up lucrative locum work as soon as they have qualified.
No wonder some GP practices no longer even try to man themselves to stay open.
When the less popular ones are closing down at lunch time, for full afternoons and weekends, it begs the question why keep them open at all?
Today, when a diagnosis or prescription is the touch of an app away on your mobile phone you’d think any normal government would surely be saying in light of all this: "Here are a fantastic number of GPs on amazingly cushy deals and how are we to roll back this gravy train?"
They might also be asking: do we need them?
Go onto Google and you are spoilt for choice. I have friends who swear by Babylon Health – a UK approved and funded system which gives them easy access to "trusted" doctors, an immediate diagnosis and a prescription waiting to be collected at their pharmacy of choice. And all for £4.99 a month. I wonder how many members of the Cabinet already use it?
In the USA, doctors pay significant dollars to be approved and be on one of these sites.
They might also be asking: do we need them?
Go onto Google and you are spoilt for choice. I have friends who swear by Babylon Health – a UK approved and funded system which gives them easy access to "trusted" doctors, an immediate diagnosis and a prescription waiting to be collected at their pharmacy of choice. And all for £4.99 a month. I wonder how many members of the Cabinet already use it?
In the USA, doctors pay significant dollars to be approved and be on one of these sites.
Why not simply let pharmacists take over the health centres, with paramedics and upgraded nurses as required?
The irony is that GPs are bomb-proof, not just because the NHS is the national religion but also because of the family doctor legacy – that residue of the love and trust we once held them in.
They should not count on this for much longer. They could be signing their own death warrant – and so, unfortunately, are we.
The loss of respect, status and standing of GPs is to the detriment of all of us. They need to man up fast.
As we expect less and less from them, by way of the personal and holistic care we really need, and move inevitably to an impersonalised, over-prescribing service-by-remote-control, where there is no ongoing relationship or duty of care to individual patients, the more fragmented, dysfunctional and unhealthy will our health care become. And so will we.
The irony is that GPs are bomb-proof, not just because the NHS is the national religion but also because of the family doctor legacy – that residue of the love and trust we once held them in.
They should not count on this for much longer. They could be signing their own death warrant – and so, unfortunately, are we.
The loss of respect, status and standing of GPs is to the detriment of all of us. They need to man up fast.
As we expect less and less from them, by way of the personal and holistic care we really need, and move inevitably to an impersonalised, over-prescribing service-by-remote-control, where there is no ongoing relationship or duty of care to individual patients, the more fragmented, dysfunctional and unhealthy will our health care become. And so will we.
- 18.7 per cent of patients said their surgery was not open at convenient times - a rise from 16 per cent in 2012
- 18.1 per cent of patients waited more than a week to see someone - a rise from 13.8 per cent in three years
- 11 per cent of patients said they had failed to get an appointment at all - up from 9.6 per cent in 2012
- 10.8 per cent said GP receptionists were "unhelpful" - a rise from 9.5 per cent in 2012
- 25.8 per cent said it was difficult to get through on the phone - a rise from 19.9 per cent in 2012
Edited by AA
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