The GPs’ revenge

On 31 March, I walked out of the Royal Marsden Hospital in London for the last time, after 28 years as a consultant cancer surgeon. At the age of almost 69, I had given six months’ notice of my wish to resign my contract by Easter, but to remain on staff in order to complete a research project on malignant melanoma.

That request was initially considered favourably, then withdrawn after I wrote a series of articles in The Spectator and the Daily Mail about what I thought was wrong with the NHS. One, in which I said that ‘GPs are part of the NHS’s problem, not the solution’, triggered a particularly vitriolic response. Doctors demanded that I be punished and attacked me on social media. The Marsden caved. I was told I had brought the hospital into disrepute; that I had behaved irresponsibly. My offence was considered unforgivable and deserving of a ‘clean break’. There was to be no contract renewal.

What was so bad about what I wrote? I had said: ‘Despite the heroic efforts of individual doctors, too many GPs no longer try to provide an even remotely personal service, to offer appointments at a convenient time or to take effective responsibility for continuity of care… General practice, as structured, is an anachronism and not fit for purpose.’ I gave examples of how the treatment of most patients, those with long-term illnesses such as asthma and diabetes, could be transformed.

Others have put forward similar proposals. In a debate in the House of Lords, health minister Lord Prior said that the ‘cottage industry GP model is broken’ and that more care needed to be delivered through health units working together. Perhaps his words were more emollient than mine, but no objections from GPs were recorded; there was no lynching on social media.