INMYVIEW... WESHOULDONLY EXPECTBASICCAREFROMNHS

IT IS 50 years ago this month that I found myself perched on a stool in front of a corpse covered in a white sheet for my first lesson in human anatomy.

I shared the examination of that corpse with three other first-year medical students and, just as my professor of anatomy, J.Z. Young, had predicted the previous week, 50 per cent of us would ultimately go on to become general practitioners.

But I doubt that ratio still holds true. General practice does not have the appeal it once did. The fact that GPs are as much business managers and administrators as medics, not to mention the burden of rising patient lists, is increasingly putting candidates off.

Much else has changed, too — some to the benefit of our patients: take the Vocational Training Act 1976, prior to which any doctor registered with the General Medical Council could become a GP.

Over the next few years, general practice would become recognised as a specialty, and all entrants had to undergo three years of postgraduate training to gain additional skills needed for the role.

But there is a more tectonic shift taking place: the very principle of the NHS and free health care for all is being undermined by lack of funds and cost-cutting.

A more appropriate phrase, and we had better all get used to it, is free, simple — basic, minimal care for all, and only when essential. It’s not something my fellow students and I envisaged when I started out in medicine half a century ago, when all we presumed that the future held was progress.