Dinosaurs of medicine

Two family doctors meet for lunch

For a variety of reasons, I had a shitty day at work today and last week was pretty trying as well. Morale in general practice is low at present. Because we are on the front line of the NHS, we carry the can for most of the problems. So often we are little more than a coconut shy.

I would not mind taking the flak for earning a quarter of million pounds a year if I was earning it. I am not.

I get home and an email points me at an article in The Times on Line. There has been a discussion recently about so called “cyberchondriacs” - patients who go out on the internet and research their own medical problems. Nothing wrong with that. I would do exactly the same thing if I were not a doctor.

Let me quote from the article:

The average GP once went to college, long ago and often far away, and learnt to become a more or less competent jack of all trades; it is inconceivable that he can be up to speed with every detail of every medical advance in every malady that comes before him.

Either he simply hasn’t the time or — more frequently in personal experience — he hasn’t the inclination. Round our way the job involves just 27 surgery hours a week, tops (no house calls, lunchtimes, evenings or weekends), a cosily undemanding sinecure for which you trouser six figures as long as you can continue to mystify the customer with a few words in Latin.

Hard as it is to break up their party, GPs need to understand that their future function lies solely in providing referrals to the waiting lists of decent specialists who are properly on top of their subject, or in signing prescriptions for drugs that they’ve never heard of but their patient has.

They will, of course, still have the last laugh by insisting that they cannot manage to do either until their next free appointment, three weeks from Friday, by which time you will be already cured. Or dead. (“Just keep taking the Googles” by Carol Sarler)

Read the full article here

It is easy to understand why patients do not mind the traditional doctor’s role being taken over by non-medically qualified "health care workers". Family doctors have become the dinosaurs of the NHS. Continuity of care? Forget it. Patients want instant access to a “health care worker” for their minor medical problems, and access to a secretary to write a letter to someone about their major problems.

What would Dr Cameron and Dr Finlay have said?

The writing is on the wall. We will soon be gone.