Doctors you can turn to

SNOWFLAKE members of the medical profession are complaining about the number of patients they have to see (Mail).

When I started as a GP in the Fifties, I had a workload that would terrify the present generation.

As third partner in a practice in Leicester, my personal list of patients was 4,500. There was no appointment system and the patients came in like a flood when the surgery door opened. Everyone had to be seen.

My average surgery attendance was about 50. on one occasion it reached 70 and it was rarely below 40. This was Monday to Saturday twice daily with emergencies on Sunday morning, followed by a practice meeting. I was on call three nights a week and one weekend in three.

My approach was to sort out the boils, pimples and sore throats, and arrange for those with more worrying symptoms to come back in the afternoon for a full examination.

Whenever I complained, my wife would say: ‘don’t forget, dear, you may be the only person they feel they can turn to.’ These are words every doctor could do with remembering.

until it is freed from politicians and becomes a free-standing corporation answerable to Parliament with a chairman of a type who could run Tesco, there will never be peace in the NHS. Dr GWILYM EDMONDSON-JONES,

Ledbury, Herefordshire.