TY - JOUR T1 - Just another GP crisis: the Collings report 70 years on JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 325 LP - 326 DO - 10.3399/bjgp20X710813 VL - 70 IS - 696 AU - Martin Roland Y1 - 2020/07/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/70/696/325.abstract N2 - It often seems that general practice lurches from crisis to crisis. Yet crises sometimes turn out to be opportunities. In this editorial I describe a number of crises that turned out to be opportunities, and end with the hope that the present one will do so too.General practice was certainly in crisis in 1950. A Lancet editorial the preceding year had discussed whether modern medicine could only realistically be practised in hospitals,1 and Joseph Collings’ description of general practice, published as a 30 page report in The Lancet, was damning, including judgements that ‘the overall state of general practice is bad and still deteriorating’, and, for inner city practice, ‘at best … very unsatisfactory and at worst a positive source of public danger’. He noted that GPs were constantly being asked to do more work for less pay, and concluded that ‘if the present trend continues, it must result in the elimination of general practice as an effective agency of medical care’.2 The report was met with fury by the profession, but as historian Charles Webster commented ‘Most of his shots hit the mark with explosive impact’, describing the report as the single most effective factor in mobilising opinion in favour of constructive change.3 Among the positive things that happened over the next few years were a very large backdated pay increase in 1952 (the Danckwerts award4), the foundation of the College of General Practitioners the same year, and a government report in 1954 concluding that general practice was ‘fundamental to the best practice of medicine and the best interests of patients’. … ER -