Do you really need to see the GP in person?

Only later, perhaps even a decade later, as the pandemic of 2020-22 shrinks in our rear-view mirror, may we be able to assess its enduring consequences. So I am only speculating when I suggest that one of these may be the beginning of the slow death of general practice in the United Kingdom.

And, no, this will not be a column attacking Britain’s GPs, whom I think to be mostly dedicated and hard-working men and women whose careers are demanding, whose work is difficult, and who are not paid excessively for the hours and expertise they bring to their vocation. Rather as with the class for which we use the generic term ‘politicians’, public discontent about ‘GPs’ is felt towards the generality. Local doctors whom we really know, like local constituency MPs we know, we tend to respect. Nevertheless, judged in terms of perceived lockdown performance, general practice has had a dreadful war. Such criticism as has surfaced in our news media is only the tip of an iceberg of public disapproval, verging on anger, heard at kitchen tables and private chatter across the land. I don’t wish to repeat or amplify it.

Indeed I’m inclined to question it. The biggest popular gripe has been that a remote consultation is no substitute for a real, face-to-face appointment. But what if the contrary is true: that remote is in many — perhaps most — cases just as good or better than going in to a local surgery and sitting in a waiting room full of sick and possibly infectious people, until one of a large team of doctors who probably doesn’t know you anyway is ready to give you what he or she hopes to be no more than ten minutes’ attention?

What should really worry family doctors and their trade union, the British Medical Association, is that the BMA’s complaint (voiced last month by GP committee chair, Dr Richard Vautrey) is justified.