Family Doctor

Extract

Time and again the question is discussed whether the age of the Family Doctor, as our forebears knew him, has passed. Many seem to think it has. Many blame the National Health Service, under which, they hold, this relationship of the patient to the doctor—as to the friend, philosopher and medical adviser to the family—is no longer possible. Others seem to think that the progress of science has brought a progress in medical treatment which does away with this approach to doctoring, which they consider outmoded. ‘Make available to each and all the latest discoveries, under the most scientific control and in the most hygienic surroundings’ is their slogan. The sponsors of this approach cry out for health centres, for group practices with rotas based on them, and for all the trimmings of a miniature hospital to be provided in all such little units. ‘The Doctors say’, no longer ‘My Doctor says’, is what one can hear more and more when patients discuss their ailments with others. Depersonalization of medical practice is a direct result of this tendency, praised by some and deplored by others.

To my mind there is much good in both ideas. We need both the personal and the scientific approach in the Family Doctor. Happily I feel certain that they do not exclude each other, that a synthesis of all that is best in each is possible and is even now on its way.

The swing of the pendulum has become proverbial. It is something of this that we are witnessing at this present time. The period in which medicine was regarded as a more or less pure science, when patients wished to consult directly specialists in the various fields and either ignored the general practitioner or made use of him simply as a sort of traffic policeman to direct them to the various out-patients departments, is swiftly passing as more and more people realize that there is always a border country between the fields of the different specialists which would become a no-man’s land but for the general practitioner.