Participating in media surveys

I listened with weary resignation to BBC radio and television on 31 Dec 2007 that ran a story on urgent and non-urgent GP referral of women with lumps to breast clinics.

The item was based on a small survey of 200 GPs for Radio 4 which was carried out by the charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer. The story was headlined as ‘Cancer referral confusing GPs’.

The survey recognised that most family doctors were following NICE guidelines. This fact, however, was lost in the media clamour which picked up on one aspect of the survey which was that about a third of GPs stated they would use judgement on whether to refer urgently a woman under 30 with a lump. This was seized on as a breech of guidelines and of course it grabbed all the (negative) headlines.

Making referral decisions using guidelines and clinical judgement, instead of simply following guidelines at all times, seems to be regarded as negligent by the media and pressure groups. Do they really think that in this case, it would be better to refer all women with a breast lump under the 2-week rule and overload the system?

The open season on GPs continues.

• © British Journal of General Practice, 2008.