Saturday, February 09, 2008
I'm a GP
This superb video was posted on YouTube yesterday by it's maker. It's a parody of the Apple Mac advertising campaign highlighting the difference between the type of GP most people have now, and the type of GP brown and Darzi are going to give most of you in the future.
It's not exactly laden with special effects, but it's truthful. The only inaccuracy I can spot is that a real GP would be wearing a cardigan......
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Dr Rant
Dr Cardigan
Dr Blue
Dr Brown
Rev Dr Green
Dr Mustard
Mr Orange
Dr Pink
Dr Purple
Mr Salmon
Dr White
Mr Beige
Ms Scarlet
Dr Informed
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11 comments:
where the fuck does the gp on the left practise? never seen one like him for more than 10 years
'never seen one like him for more than 10 years'
been going to A&E or OOH services then?
no been going to inner city practises staffed by locums who change every few months while the partners never actuall bother to turn up
strict 4.5 days a week opening
cows for receptionists who want to know your entire medical history before granting you an audience with his eminence the locum
relationship between docs and my family = 0
etc etc
no one,
Go away!
Gosh, GP Plc is part of a huge (for which read "evil, world-raping") business which aims to provide decent service because otherwise they will lose customers.
Whereas, of course, your cuddly NHS GP (who may or may not ask intrusive questions about your lifestyle (such as whether you smoke) in order to hit their quality framework points and thus gain more income) is part of a small, concerned, altruistic NHS with a mere national scope and a tiny staff of 1.4 million, and which is overseen by a concerned and caring state which is only true monopoly in the country (and which has a near-monopoly, not only on healthcare but also healthcare training).
On another note, of course local GPs could never ever be contracted by big, evil, world-raping companies.
But, wait a minute: local GPs can be contracted by the NHS but obviously that would never, ever happen under private companies.
Nooohohoho: private companies know that their patients are best served by moving GPs from Aberdeen to Truro and from Tonbridge to Ulster, and generaly mixing it all up. Because that's what evil companies do, right?
Fucking hellski...
DK
Devil old chap
You miss the point - General Practices are, and always have been private businesses, run for profit by their owners.
For want of better word, we are 'stakeholders' in our businesses, and it is actually very difficult to leave when the going gets tough because we are very much tied in. For this reason, we invest more than our time in our practices, and this is why we are the most efficient primary care service in the world.
If I have to go and work for Virgin, because some pseudo-socialist fucktard thinks 'competiton' involves handing money to Richard Branson and actually stopping me competing on a level playing field, then I will not feel as engaged with my patients or place of work.
This means that I will not care as much. Who loses then? Even if the labour market were a free one, you wouldn't easily find 40,000 experienced doctors* who'll go the extra mile to line Virgin or Tescos pocket. Believe me, the personal touch will not be a common thing in a polyclinic or a TescoDoc surgery.
For this reason, very few multinational restaurant companies attract Michelin stars. Great restaruants are a unique fusion of their surroundings and their staff - the 'franchising' technique simply fails.
These plc GPs will measure themselves by gaming and hitting meaningless arbitary targets so beloved of Ayatollah McClunkjaw - we all know that that is what will matter to them - as soon as we're out of the way, I can assure you 'patient satisfaction surveys' will disappear as well.
Having said that, one could always just liberalise the entire market - free patients to move about between GPs with a genuine choice between traditional or plc GPS - I will wipe the floor with everyone I can tell you because I'm fucking brilliant at what I do. I would love the chance to be a bit more commercial and earn money by providing what my patients want (with the usual caveats).
Frank
* Who can actually speak fucking English for a start.
Glad you picked up DK on these points - somehow we have got to get across to people exactly what they are going to lose. I know there are some who don't believe this, and/or do not value what they have got, but this is the critical message. Of course, the hours row is a fucking irritation, because it means losing lots of money... or losing shedloads of money. And all the while working longer hours but still being dependent on patient whim at survey time (and you're right - they'll be gone as soon as the Darzi polyclincs and Beardie Branson have taken over) to get paid.
BUt it's also a smokescreen, which the press and the Public need to see through quickly. The REAL problems will occur when we're all indentured slaves for Plc's, but by then it'll be a bit too late.
The restaurant analogy is a good one - when did you last see a proper chef who gave a shit working in Macdonalds...?
Interesting to read this from Alice Springs.
Ironically, after training in the UK, I came home to Australia because I wanted to work as a salaried GP in a patient-run non-profit general practice.
This was not possible in the UK where GPs are for-profit contractors to a behemoth NHS.
Yet my working life is more like that of your cottage-industry GP than GP-Plc.
And as others have commented here, what the patient experiences may be different to what the GP thinks is on offer.
Society is changing, your GPs took the chance to opt out of after-hours work, and fewr stay in one place for many years.
Let's not be overly simplistic, we need to define the problem and then look at possible solutions, not just defend the status quo.
Dr Crippen sorted out 71 patients in one working day.
I know of no private GP practice that generates such activity. To see so many patients and do so much medicine, it's hard to see how a private system can "compete" in delivery of that volume of health care each and every day, cheaper.
Ignoring the added value a GP brings, ignorning the better quality evidenced by GPs over alternative workers, ignoring the continuity of care issues, ignoring the efficiency of seeing someone who knows you/your health so you don't need to go through it all (with yet another doctor, yet again), on purely economic arguments one GP sorting 71 patients a day has to be a winner, no?
The problem is, that there are GPs that are crap. Mine, for instance, is one of those where it's very difficult to make future appointments - normal procedure is to dial at 8:30 on the dot and keep pressing redial until someone answers. Then you might get an appointment that day. I have never seen the same doctor twice and in 8 years I have never seen the person who is nominally my GP. Some of the doctors are very good but a few will just tell you to take Ibuprofen and sod off (it was years before I had a definitive diagnosis of gout).
I realise that this situation has largely be brought about by government interference (48 hour target -> phone on the day) but I suspect that many patients just think it's GPs being awkward.
There are no evening or weekend appointments and my employers are utter bastards about time off for appointments. I am trying to chaneg jobs (but it's not that easy) and I did try to change to a GP who is actually geographically closer but apparently I'm not in their catchment area.
I realise that a lot of these things aren't the actual GP's fault and I also realise that, like every government handover to the private sector, it would be a fucking disaster for the big companies to take over GP provision, but I guess that many people have problems like mine and don't think further than blaming the GPs.
From where I'm standing, it looks like the government has messed up your service with stupid rules, re-done your contract and then pilloried you as greedy bastards for doing what they said. If they weren't so incompetent, I'd suspect a conspiracy.
71 patients in a day is not neccessarily a good thing as I can't imagine any GP would have been in a safe state of mind to manage all of them properly, especially towards the end of this long day.
The worrying bit when being treated at a polyclinic is, who is accountable should something goes wrong? This is why (Amongst other things), as a patient, I value the GP I have known for years much, much more. I also 'refuse' to be seen by quacks which will be the norm with polyclinics.
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