QOFs buy Porsches!! GPs don't do any real work, all they do is refer. GPs don't practice real medicine.

Why the hell would you want to be a GP?

I'm not sure about you, but there seems to be a lot of stigma around medical students wanting to be GPs where I am. From personal experience, my partner wants to be a GP and his mother (who is a secretary for an orthopaedic surgeon) was horrified to find out he wanted to be a GP and started reeling off a long list of specialities that "he has yet to experience". She viewed GPs as second rate doctors and only "doctors who couldn't make consultants become GPs". I've also witnessed hospital consultants pulling a face and saying why would you want to do that to students who have confessed to being interested in general practice.

Personally, being a GP has never come very high on my list of career choices, in fact it's always been pretty low & more than a few times I can recall saying never, ever! So why is it that every student seems to dream of being a surgeon / cardiologist / A&E consultant / neurosurgeon etc etc? Why is it almost seen as a dirty secret that we aspire to become general practitioners? (Of course, this could completely not be the case where you are, but that seems to be the attitude here.)

In fact, I had a moment on GP placement the other week and it left me feeling so good that I thought I'd share.

The patient was an older gentleman who had come in with his wife after being discharged from hospital recently due to gallstones. He was awaiting an ERCP and had been sent home with a prescription for regular paracetamol and co-amoxiclav.

The paracetamol label read, take 2 tablets, 4 times a day and the co-amoxiclav take 1 tablet 3 times a day.

The couple were very anxious as the patient felt he did not know how to correctly take his medication, would it interact with his other medications, should they be taken in conjunction with food etc. From a knowledge perspective, these questions are quite easily addressed and didn't take a lot of time. The couple just wanted some reassurance and guidance.

Additionally the patient was very concerned as he had a friend pass away from septicaemia secondary to gallstones. He was very concerned about the possibility of that happening to him and how he would know he had an "infection of the blood". Again, this seemed like a concern that was could easily and quickly be addressed.

Anyway, this experience actually changed my opinion of general practice radically. Whatever the reason, the patient didn't get the information and reassurance he needed from the hospital doctors and as a GP we could discuss his concers and he left feeling quite satisfied. I just got a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that we were able to help him and reassure him and his partner; it was rather lovely!

So maybe general practice has moved just a little higher up my list of career choices...either way I think I'll keep that revelation to myself for now!