By the way... AGP disaster is looming

HIPPOCRATES, known as the father of medicine, said that it is far more important to know the person who has the disease than to know the disease that the person has.

The doctors who know this more than any are GPs, as the only masters of all aspects of the healthcare business. Yet GP recruitment is falling and students of medicine are less and less likely to choose general practice as their career path. One reason is the prevailing attitude, long outdated, that a GP deals only with minor illness.

That attitude still holds among many hospital doctors — specialists who diagnose, identify and treat diseases. They have a science-based discipline, with the art of medicine very much on the back seat. As such they are experts in telling patients what is wrong with them and what is not wrong, though they often find that they have to tell the patient there is nothing to be done about their symptoms. GPs face the same problem — but for them, it goes further.

They must continue to deal with patients who have symptoms, feelings, sensations. Disease may be identified, but often it is not, and yet the patient is suffering.

There is a problem to be solved, whether or not there is an exact diagnosis, and this is where those trained in general practice learn the unique and special skills that are not part of the technical, scientific hospital world. GPs learn to be trusted, informed, respectful and paternalistic.

Ever since Hippocrates, it has been known that this is what patients want, but this is now under threat — from Government cutbacks, the failure to recruit GPs and medical schools under-playing the importance of general practice.

Sadly, because of this short-sightedness, disaster for the public is on the horizon.