Once again the BBC airwaves are full of near-hate of GPs.  Has all intelligence left the minds of the Guardianistas who now dominate the once hallowed halls of the Corporation?  Impartiality, never a strong point since Blair’s New Labour began calling the shots, seems to have politically departed and to have remained an absentee  despite the change of government leader. Indeed, sycophancy for Blair seems to have moved seamlessly into sycophancy for Brown.

The focal point of the campaign this time is the GP out-of-hours service which has, say the BBC, worsened since (and I use their words) “GPs have been allowed to give up their out of hours responsibilities”.

GPs are civilised human beings with all the wishes, hopes and desires of any other citizen of this land; with families, homes and, indeed, dare I say it, lives?  Yet the Guardianistas of Broadcasting House – and, it must be said, large sections of the national press – seem to believe and demand that the doctor should be on-call day and night into infinity for their convenience, that GPs are government serfs.

Well, as a retired GP of some 40 years practice, I have to tell them that I have been there, done that and grabbed the T-shirt.   The next bit will not be popular but I was glad to get out of the NHS of today into the more mundane everyday life enjoyed by the rest of British Society.

For nigh on thirty years I worked a one-in-two rota in my practice with all the restrictions on my life and that of my family that that caused.   Let’s spell it out for the Observer readers.

For thirty years I was on-call to the entire practice population alternate weekends from Friday morning until Tuesday morning and alternate weekday nights.  During that period my life was not my own.  It belonged to the practice and its patients.  Before the days of mobile phones I was tied to the house between the many calls. Family visits, school events and the rest did not exist for me.   

I had Saturday morning surgeries and ad hoc Sunday surgeries to cope with the demand.

No, I didn’t complain.  That is what country practice was like and I walked into it and accepted it.

But, time went by, and the complaint culture set in largely instigated by that floss-head Kenneth Clarke MP.  He, alone, did more to change medicine from being a vocation and a profession into, as he called it, a “job”.  He stimulated complaints, saying they were an “opportunity”.

By God, he was right.

An opportunity for a minority of patients who “knew their rights”.  An opportunity  which swelled into a cacophony of whingeing complainers throughout the land.   GPs would visit “or else”!

There were no more resources provided, no more GPs to satisfy these increased demands, so the “job” became less and less satisfying.    GPs were not only being taken for granted but the service they provided, especially out of hours was being abused and they, as a group, were being villified.

The government didn’t give a damn.  They were getting an excellent service and they paid only buttons extra to get it.   A few pounds for a night visit.

Patients loved it, though many still whinged and moaned.  They knew that on the majority of occasions they had the GP where they wanted him.  By their bed-sides for a bad cold or sore throat at three in the morning and to hell with the fact, if they even had the sense to consider it, that the same GP would be smiling through morning surgery from eight-thirty that same morning.  

The GP dare not not go on these useless visits.  He knew that a complaint to the authorities or the GMC could lead to several years of  uncertainty, fear and disruption to his and his family’s lives whilst the GMC investigated the, more often then not, groundless case against him.

All this because an increasing minority of patients abused the service which had been so willingly provided for generations by the family doctor.

Not surprisingly, resentment grew within the profession and the leading thought in most GPs’ minds became early retirement.   When can I get the hell out of here?

For once, the GPs’ union, the BMA, took them seriously.  Mind you, it took them some years to do so.    In 2005 the train finally hit the buffers.   GPs wanted out in very large numbers.  Either out of hours would cease to be compulsory or there would be no GP service at all.  Resignation was very much an option.

For their part, the Blair government calculated how much they were paying GPs for their out of hours service and thought that was reasonable.   It came to a paltry £6,000 a year.  So, they said, if GPs agreed to a with-holding of £6,000 from their pay the government would take on, through the PCTs, the responsibility for providing the out of hours service.

Knowing full well how much extra work their colleagues had been freely providing since the inception of the NHS and how much it would really cost, the GPs’ union agreed.   They knew that patients and the country had been trading on the goodwill of the profession for years.

The thicko’s in government had no idea.  They, like the whingeing patients, had been taking GPs for granted and in future they would have to pay the cost.

Goodwill had been killed off and it wasn’t possible to resurrect it.    It wasn’t just the out-hours abuse that did that.  It was all the years and years of doctor bashing by such moronic, brain-dead Secretaries of State for Health as Alan Milburn and his successors.

Two facts rapidly became blatantly obvious.  To provide a service even half as good as GPs had customarily provided would be beyond the government’s finances and, secondly, GPs themselves weren’t going to help out.  At last, civilisation had reached into their homes and they greeted it with open arms.   So, where were the doctors to come from?

The answer was from Europe and wherever in the world, at whatever cost, the PCTs and government could attract them.

And, as we see, the complaints have mounted.

After years of abusing the service so willingly provided, initially at least, the population is getting the out-of-hours service it deserves.  GPs have had enough.  The older GPs remember what it was like and the new, young ones, quite rightly expect a normal family and social life.  Neither are willing to work out of hours.

The geni is out of the bottle and it ain’t going back in.

Thoughtless, demanding patients, egged on by successive, greedy governments and less than intelligent media writers have caused the problem and it is theirs to get on with.

The more the BBC, incited or instructed by government, bashes the profession the less likely is it that any help will come from GPs.   Oh, and it wouldn’t be such a good idea to make OOH compulsory again.  The GP crisis that would cause would be amazing to comprehend.

Report the news fairly, BBC.   The vast majority of patients, just short of 90%, are well satisfied with the service GPs provide.   It would be a pleasant change to hear you say so rather than parrot the government's vindictive propaganda.

The out-of-hours service which government should provide?  Well, that is another matter altogether but it is the government’s responsibility not the GP’s.  So, BBC, how about recognising that in your bulletins or is your collective nose so far up the Brown anus that it's beyond hope?

Extract that hooter, you may find life outside is refreshing.

( 9/8/07)