All letters are subject to editing and may be shortened. General letters can be sent to bjgpdisc{at}rcgp.org.uk (please include your postal address for publication), and letters responding directly to BJGP articles can be submitted online via eLetters. We regret we cannot notify authors regarding publication.
For submission instructions visit: bjgp.org/letters
Sir Denis Pereira Gray makes some salient points about the role of medical schools in GP recruitment,1 which I hope the recently announced new medical schools will take note of. Even when a medical school has an active primary care faculty, it may not be engaged in promoting general practice as a career. Certainly, when I was a student, our medical school had an academic department including a very well-known professor; unlike almost every other specialty represented in the university, none of the senior academics seemed to have any involvement in teaching medical students, not even an introductory lecture to demonstrate why we should consider general practice as a career. Teaching at the university was exclusively done by what I now realise were academic GP registrars; not a bad thing in itself but perhaps not ideal without any senior input? Thankfully, I encountered a number of enthusiastic GP trainers on placements who took a clueless medical student into their busy schedules, introduced me to the writings of McWhinney and Starfield, and showed me what a diverse, exciting, and rewarding career general practice offered. So, many thanks to Drs Nick Foreman, Tony Antoniou, and especially Iain Crofton-Briggs; after 2 weeks in his company I knew that there was no other job I wanted to do. I hope that as a GP trainer I can do likewise for our local students. However, I would implore the career GP academics in medical schools to step back from their international conferences and research assessment exercises, and spend time inspiring the next generation both clinically and academically.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2018