Helen Salisbury: It’s time to push back against the destruction of general practice

Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing general practice wrong. So many consultations not only take longer than the time allotted but also create more work to be done at the end of the day: letters to read, referrals to write, things to look up and pass back to the patient. This means that I rarely leave the surgery until the cleaning staff have been and gone.But when I look at the various alternative models being touted,12 which promise an efficient service where doctors can concentrate on complex patients while “simple” cases are seen by other healthcare workers, it doesn’t look like an improvement.34 If my patient’s problem is straightforward I can see them quickly, usually building on an existing relationship. If it turns out to be more complicated than the presenting symptoms suggest, I have the training to detect that.New members of the team (pharmacists, physiotherapists, and specialist nurses) bring…
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