Who would want to be a GP?
CAROLINE Wilson’s report (“GPS don’t have enough knowledge about the menopause”, The Herald, August 30) made me realise one of the reasons why general practice is struggling to recruit and retain doctors, and how fortunate I was to spend most of my professional life in a medical specialty, rather than my initially intended career path of
GP. The implication in the report is that the solution is for GPS to have more training in this particular health problem.
Scarcely a week seems to go by without some spokesperson from a patient support group appearing in the media claiming that their particular health problem is misunderstood or not appreciated (“medical students only receive x hours’ instruction in their entire undergraduate career...”). Once again, the proposed remedy is more training.
Specialists are almost as bad. There seems to be a steady trickle of reports from the medical royal colleges, their faculties, specialist societies and academic departments of universities seeking more attention or spending on their particular disease/disorder, and the length of time it takes to diagnose a particular condition. Almost always, these reports contain the phrase “and the GP is ideally placed...”, reducing them to the status of spear carriers of a special interest group. Then there are those who wish that GPS would spend more time screening patients for gambling, domestic abuse and other social problems.
Many years ago, the British Medical Journal carried a series of articles titled “What I look for in a good GP” by various consultants. One, a consultant geriatrician, wrote that, in his opinion, possession of the Diploma in Geriatric Medicine was the hallmark of a good GP. This prompted one GP to write to the BMJ’S editor to the effect that, applying that sort of criteria, in order to earn the approbation of all the consultants in the hospitals to which he sent his patients then he would have to acquire 47 diplomas and certificates. He wondered where he would find the time, money and study leave to achieve this level of excellence.
And that’s before GPS start to grumble about the things that all doctors, specialists included, begin to complain about. Christopher W Ide, Waterfoot.