Be responsible for own health, says leading GP
PATIENTS NEED to take responsibility for their own health in the future as advances in technology make face-to-face contact with doctors less necessary, a leading GP has said.
Dr Clare Gerada, a former chairwoman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said she was using technology to try to stop patients coming into her consulting room.
But technological advances – with increasing ranges of equipment available to doctors – made a 10-minute GP consultation even more complex, she said.
Dr Gerada said it was not the job of GPs to provide patients with information about health, fitness and diet. Instead, she said, people should turn to the internet.
“The reason I am saying this is that the future has to be patients taking responsibility,” Dr Gerada said.
“The idea that you need to consult me as the GP to tell you where to go is a nonsense in tomorrow’s world. In yesterday’s patronising world where I had the knowledge and I kept it from you, fine, but you are just as responsible.
“If you don’t do that I am afraid that what is going to happen is that you have all the power and no responsibility.
“We are going to end up with a burnt-out system where there won’t be health professionals because we can’t take that responsibility.”
Dr Gerada was speaking at an event at the Cheltenham Science Festival to discuss how technology can revolutionise healthcare.
She said that when she first became a GP 30 years ago, her most advanced piece of technology was the telephone and now everything is paperless with increasing reliance on technology to proc- ess prescriptions and book appointments. She addded: “What next? We are developing a system whereby patients can consult with me remotely.
“When smartphones began to be developed a decade ago we realised this was not going to stop the workload coming through the surgery – in fact it increases the workload.
“What we have to do is to try and stop patients coming into my consulting room. But safely. To try and find a way of doing that we developed eConsult. This is now available to nearly three million patients across the country.
“We are now developing this technology so that patients can go from their sofa at home to intensive care virtually remotely.”
She added: “We are now within a year or two years of completely transforming the way healthcare is delivered and the way patients are going to interact with doctors.
“The most vital part of my job and the part that makes everything else much easier, which makes my care for patients, irrespective of how I use these machines, is me having a relationship with my patients.”