Thirty-odd years ago I was a partner in a six-man (literally) practice in Hampshire, where I had a personal list of over 2500 patients, responsibilities at the adjacent casualty department and cottage hospital, and was on a one-in-six weekdays and weekend on-call rota in a practice area of about 300 square miles. There was, unimaginably now, still time to get home at lunchtime and even do a bit of gardening or DIY before baby clinic and the evening surgery. There were no mobile phones and my wife triaged the calls that came in when I was on the road. I look back on those days as a golden age.
There was also time for research: defined around then by an American wag as ‘an unnatural act, performed by faculty to achieve tenure’. That wasn’t quite my motivation, but research in general practice …