The health secretary is taking a risk in gunning for family doctors. The public trust them more than they do those in government
This is true. Which is the point of reorganising the NHS. So that politicians take fewer of the decisions and properly incentivised doctors take more of them.
Er… aren’t GPs mostly private providers contracted (in part) to the NHS, and haven’t they always been?
Certainly, they get the higher approval ratings than any part of the NHS does.
Actually I trust doctors about as much as I trust politicians. Both groups are basically scum.
Pretty much what Michael Jennings just said.
You get a similar failure of logic in education. Michael Gove should listen to teachers because he has no experience of teaching. But half the point of Gove’s reforms is to take control away from local councils (who generally have no teaching experience either) and give it to the teachers.
It’s not that I don’t trust them, it’s more that I don’t understand why they cost so much.
The thing I find today is that the gap between a pharmacist and a specialist is pretty small. If a pharmacist can’t give you a good idea about the solution to your problem, chances are that your GP will be referring you.
And pharmacists don’t mind if I’m not local, and are there until 8pm.
Charlie – teachers, or their unions anyway, seem to be saying the present system is great and standards haven’t fallen over the years. Anybody who has picked up a past paper or who has to hold job interviews with recent school leavers knows what an utter barefaced lie that is. I have even seen university graduates who lack the competence to write a formal letter. The strangest thing is, while these kids lack literacy, numeracy, and basic knowledge of history or geography, they make up for in self esteem and a sense of entitlement.
I don’t know how any reasonably honest person could be involved with falling standards in schools and the cynical grade inflation that goes with it, and not hate themselves for cheating young people out of a decent education. How do they sleep at night?
Whatever your concerns about Doctors–GPs or otherwise–they are mostly being replaced with much cheaper “Nurse Practitioners” who have 2 well-planned years of training rather than the wasteful, over-cooked 7 years that Doctors used to get.
You can count on the nurses to tell you what you want to hear. You suggest what you think the problem is and they agree–saves so much time and money.
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“I’ts not that I don’t trust them, it’s more
that I don’t understand why they cost so much”.
It’s at least partly because they operate using what is essentially a medieval guild. The onerous and overlong training and qualification requirements are largely about erecting barriers to entry to the profession.
(Comments system ate the comment twice, for some reason).
From personal experience I’d trust about half the GPs at my local practice. I read somewhere that 60% of GP diagnoses are wrong, sounds about right.
Can a GP make a correct diagnosis when they are not necessarily being given all the facts? At best they have a partial picture based on what they are told and the few tests they can run.
Though the GP and consultant thinking kidney stone when its bladder cancer was a new one on us.
If they’re not getting all the facts, they’re not asking the right questions. Plus, they will have your medical history in front of them.
I’ve often found that younger GPs are better, probably because their knowledge is fresher.
And how much time can the GP give to each consultation. And how much of that is dedicated to form filling.
Many of the problems the GP sees are minor aches and pains or certificate needs.
And a lot of time must be allocated to dealing with what the herbalist said.