Retired GP: selfdiagnosing is ‘fundamentally flawed’

As a retired GP, I have mixed feelings about Jeremy Hunt’s plans for a technology revolution in the NHS. I have no doubt that the internet and smartphones can be better used to book appointments, and patients should certainly be able to access their medical records online. In this regard it feels like we are 10 years behind where we need to be. It has been neglected for too long.

But I’m less convinced that technology should be used to diagnose symptoms. One of a GP’S most underrated skills is interpreting what patients say. Over 40 years I grew to understand what they meant by “a tickly cough”, or “a throbbing pain”. But these descriptions were never enough by themselves. You always need to see the physical symptoms, too. The more evidence you have, the more confident you can be about a diagnosis. Expecting patients to ‘self-diagnose’ via the internet, and then explain the symptoms over the phone, is fundamentally flawed. I wouldn’t want to be the person trying to decide what is wrong with the patient. It would involve too much guesswork. Dr Ian Smith

I’ve always thought that it was contradictory to claim that we are living in a kind of Nineteen Eighty-fourstyle police state, where everything we think, let alone speak, is monitored. After all, the very fact that you can say openly, without fear of arrest, that we live in such a world provides overwhelming evidence that we don’t! Nothing will happen to Ken Rigsby for his outburst. He won’t be dragged blindfolded to Room 101 to face his worst nightmare (noisy PCS, perhaps?). Maybe he should visit Iran, North Korea or China to see what Nineteen Eighty-four is really like in 2016.

David Smith