Dear Editor
Shyan Goh describes the reality so well. It is sometime forgotten by dissatisfied doctors in the UK that people who use the NHS and especially those who have been loyal to the NHS for decades have had to tolerate huge changes to services which haven’t even been properly explained. The realisation that practices run as a business has become more and more clear and cynicism about individuals’ value in monetary terms has replaced trust that individuals best interests are necessarily being served. Many have seen GPs grow older alongside them and expected a relationship of a sort would continue to give safe and trusted treatments. Instead they see a churn of clinicians including those replaced by part time or locum doctors.
The message heard so often makes it obvious that the profession is no longer attractive. Younger practitioners will not though have experienced how things were before the NH|S became so obviously a service which treats people as units to be checked off for payments. That this activity can take more time than the often dehumanising ten minutes allocated to an appointment. It is the younger cohorts who will eventually decide what style they find attractive, including the reality of less relationship even more digital.
It is vital that people do access their notes amongst all the confusion of churn in practices. It is no longer possible to rely on that accurate and complete information can be conveyed in a consultation with the professionals they consult which include even more input from allied professions. People need to review what is recorded so that any amendments can be made and information read in quiet time to enable self care in a genuine partnership, something which the NHS which is constantly promoting but is not altogether embraced and certainly doesn’t make easy to understand.
Re: Helen Salisbury: I’m a GP—get me out of here?