This one is an ode to the GPs out there – my colleagues who are labouring away in perhaps the most unglamorous, under-appreciated specialty.
Have you ever stopped to think what GPs carry on behalf of the healthcare system?
Seems people are very willing to criticise GPs for what they don’t do, what they do do, what they should do and what they can’t do.
But they protect the healthcare system from implosion.
If you think our healthcare system budget is blowing out, imagine it without GPs. GPs absorb risk on behalf of the system and carry it.
They carry it across multiple patient encounters, making considered decisions to NOT investigate, NOT refer, NOT prescribe, because the healthcare budget is expended at the tip of the GP’s fingers.
If you think getting an appointment with non-GP specialists now is hard, imagine if everyone with chest pain was waiting to see a cardiologist. Or everyone with menopausal symptoms was waiting for a gynaecologist.
GPs do this without support from pretty much any aspect of government.
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When it gets hard, they are “private business owners” so there is no support for superannuation, maternity leave or disability. All this has to be self-funded.
When government wants them to order fewer tests, they get nudged … or worse. But government never tells patients that doctors are being pressured or prevented from referring for tests.
If the wait to see a non-GP specialist is 12 months, the GP holds that patient, and does what they can to keep everything safe, pushing into areas of practice that in times gone by were far beyond the scope of general practice.
In other words, the GP becomes both the face of healthcare rationing, and the risk manager of it, right at the pointy end, close to the patient who is suffering, awaiting specialist care.
It’s a huge job that is under-appreciated, never discussed and largely invisible.
Working in an emergency department, I have the luxury of sending people with unresolved complexity (of the non-emergency kind) back to their GP.
I feel guilty every time I do that, because I have been on the receiving end, and I know how hard it is to manage that complexity in 15-minute bites.
So today, I just wanted to give a shout out to those fighting against the maelstrom to keep on holding the healthcare system together, one patient at a time.
Dr Jillann Farmer is a GP and medical administrator. She is former medical director of the United Nations, currently working as a rural emergency department locum, and as CEO of A Better Culture.
This article is was first published on Dr Farmer’s LinkedIn feed. Read the original post here.
The post A love letter to my GP colleagues appeared first on Medical Republic.
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