Dr Copperfield speculates where his vote should go in the election based on their grand plans for general practice
More surgeries! More appointments! More scans!
Morons!
Infuriating, isn’t it, how the various political parties can magically switch into ‘fix primary care’ mode when there are votes at stake. And hilarious, too, given the current incumbent’s Big Idea is to build 100 new surgeries to compensate for all the surgeries their current and recent policies have forced into closure
So currently, I’m not agonising over who to vote for. I’m just working out how best to cathartically and performatively spoil my ballot paper. The only thing that can stop me is if one of the parties adopts the following three point plan.
- Stop fannying around and fund general practice properly. Pay us and GPs will come and, more importantly, stay.
- Shuffle the staffing pack. Radical, I know, but I believe the best person to be doing GP work is a GP. So move the ARRS cavalry back to doing their actual day jobs of pharmacy, nurse, paramedic, PA etc, and fill those slots with all the unemployed GPs currently grounded by the noctor pandemic. Do this in the short term by unlocking ARRS money, and in the long run by step one above.
- Save massive amounts of time, energy and resources by reeling in absurd primary prevention policies. By which I mean, focus primary CV prevention on real cardiac candidates and stop medicalising those at marginal risk. This means more bang for limited bucks, plus the opportunity to start offering a National Illness Service for those who need it and to stop imposing a National Health Service on those who don’t.
Sorted. That said, pretty much as I’ve been writing this blog, the Tories have come up with the idea of sorting the nation’s acne crisis by delegating it to pharmacists. Which in itself will probably save us. They’re definitely recruiting more Rons, too.
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex
More Rons tasked? I heard it was Manny Dix..
or those Cockney lads “Buncher” Crooks and Baz Tuds…
Good article Tony, but downer alert I’m gonna hijack your column to ask the question which has been troubling me. Medical news articles in Pulse involving Ukraine have been open to comments by GPs over the last few years, but why have medical articles re the Gaza peoples suffering been closed to GP comments? Generally, GPs are a very moral and ethical lot so their opinions should be allowed to be aired in the comments section. Otherwise this is moral inequity. Maybe one for the Ed….
Eg article https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/politics/demand-end-to-gaza-health-worker-attacks-600-gps-urge-government/
Hi, this is Jaimie, the editor. Thank you for bringing this up. Yes, this was an editorial decision we made, and it wasn’t an easy one, but mainly based on pragmatism. So I will try to explain myself. Rightly or wrongly, the debate around Gaza is – in the West at least – far more incendiary than the debate around Ukraine. As a previous story of ours suggests, GPs are being referred to the GMC as a result of comments made on Gaza.
As a small editorial team (there are only five of us working on Pulse), policing such comments would be beyond our resources. To give you an example, we had to remove a comment in reply to your comment (despite it ironically explaining our position quite well), because the first part of it was insulting and would no doubt had led to dozens of comments, all of which would need to be carefully considered – and none of it really relating to UK general practice.
I would argue in terms of free speech, there are plenty of forums for free speech on the issue and a UK GP magazine isn’t necessarily the best place.
I am actually reviewing our comments policy and will post something about this later this month.
Thanks for taking the time to reply Jaimie, and I did anticipate and do understand your Pulse position and the fact of a small team. But, as you said, you have the remedies of removing comments which you deem inappropriate, and also there are other bodies eg the GMC or the courts. However, I think freedom of thought and speech trumps all of this. I don’t need to rehearse the arguments here about freedom of speech as, no doubt, you’re familiar with them, being a politics graduate. But some things that happen that touch on our medical world should inflame our passion (as they did and were seen in comments on medical news regarding the Ukraine conflict)
Imo, whether debate about Ukraine is less incendiary, this should not be allowed to trespass upon the moral equality owed towards debate on medical issues in Gaza. There shouldn’t be a difference of approach.
Tbh, it’s my gut and not my intellect that instinctively tells me it feels wrong to silence debate on medical issues in Gaza (eg the Pulse article I referenced to which I couldn’t comment).
It’s just that English instinct for fairness. Apologies to TC for piggybacking this..
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/rishi-sunak-laughs-as-gp-heckler-says-nhs-is-disintegrating-13149506