I remember his words like they were yesterday “I’m quitting the NHS”. Last year, this GP who had given 30 years of his life to caring for patients looked at me with tears in his eyes but a wan smile on his lips. Pain from the resignation and disappointment; relief from the burden and battle. “I’m an effective doctor because I know my patients, their history, their families, their jobs and their neighbourhoods,” he went on. “Up until now I’ve adapted and changed to the Government’s whim, but no more. They behave like we cannot be trusted – I can’t work for a boss that doesn’t trust me”.
You may have noticed, barely a day goes by when GPs are not being criticised and maligned, or pushed and shoved. No matter how much the Government messed up the GP contract resulting in a few doctors being paid a six figure salary, is this the way our health ambassadors should be treated? Our confidant in sickness? The professional who we trust with our most intimate care?
The Government’s vision couldn’t be more blurred if it put on a pair of bottle top spectacles with vaseline smeared over the lenses. They talk about easier access then plan more remote mega-surgeries. They talk about patient-centred care then prescribe an overdose of targets that deliver computer-centred consultations. They champion ‘evidence based medicine’ thinking it can disguise greater state control of treatment. So having talked at clinicians for 10 years, and marketed authoritarian consolidation as multiple consultations, they now send others to deliver their orders – sorry – ideas.
The best known clinical messengers come in the form of Lord Darzi and Dr Colin-Thomé, now masters of double speak. “No Polyclinics will be imposed” – but PCTS are already having to go ahead and chose the location for them! “No GP will have to work in one” – but don’t complain to us when you refuse to work in the polyclinic we are building in the same road as your surgery! “Don’t keep your patients waiting” but can you just fit in a few extra thousand healthy bods so the Government will be reassured that they aren’t ill?
Over at 2020health we are hosting a petition for GPs to sign to demonstrate their commitment to the core values of the NHS: Valuing the patient-practitioner relationship, free from Government interference and bureaucracy, able to respond to local patient need, delivering excellence in healthcare because that’s what they trained to do. PLEASE send this link to your GP and Doctor friends and encourage them to sign - they deserve a break and after all our coughing, reeking, discharging and whining I think they’d like our support.