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Thanks for your timely and succinct article on the 1966 Charter in the current BJGP.
You may be interested to know that over the last few years we have built up the core of some oral history of GP at the RCGP. There are recordings and some transcripts of groups and individual GPs talking over their experiences.
There are also the records of the extended practice team talking too. Most of the GPs had worked before and during the post Charter 'golden age' and were able to specifically compare working life before and after it. We even have the memories of some GPs who started working just before the NHS itself.
I think these archived recordings will become invaluable for future historians. Particularly as, not surprisingly, many of the GPs have now died of old age. For instance John Horder died soon after and only recently his wife and professional partner, Elizabeth, has sadly died too. (She was the house doctor who gave Penicillin to the first civilian patient in a case written up in the Lancet at the time!).
Incidentally, Julian Tudor Hart who you mentioned is included in the archive amongst others too.
I was lucky enough to start as a GP just in the wake of the Charter and assumed that the 'golden age' of GP was going to be the bed rock of the NHS and care in the community with the exciting development of extended integrated multiprofessional teams working in purpose built primary care centres.
Looking back n...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.