I would like to comment on the article in the BMJ dated 21 October entitled ‘It’s time for GPs to be recognised as the specialists they are’ by Mary McCarthy.1
I fully agree with the author that GPs need to be recognised as specialists in family medicine and urge the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) to look into revising the designation for GPs. The main reason why general practice fails to attract newly qualified doctors is the lower status compared with consultants in the hospital due to their designation. GPs in European countries are called ‘consultants in family medicine’ and have equal status to their peers in hospitals. No such effort to change the title of GPs has been done by the RCGP in the UK. In some countries, such as India and Pakistan, a doctor can practise as a GP straight after their primary qualification, but this is not the case in the UK and the EU, nor in the US and Australia where doctors have to go through further specialisation after primary medical qualification in order to practise family medicine.
GPs are regarded as inferior and having lower qualifications than hospital peers in the UK and abroad, which is completely inappropriate because they need to complete the GP rotation and MRCGP in order to practise as a GP. It is not the workload that is a deterrent to taking up general practice but the status that makes it unattractive for newly-qualified doctors. Therefore, GPs need to be recognised as consultants in family medicine in order to give them equal status to hospital peers and attract newly-qualified doctors into the profession.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2018
REFERENCE
- 1.↵