I've worked in York now for the last 28 years. It is an unusual place in
many ways. There are consultants and
GPs from the 'ethnic minorities' but they are in the minority. This to
some extent mirrors the demographics of the
city. Our practice with 20,500 patients in the last census has 0.7%
patients recorded as being members of an ethnic minority.
I think this is probably a bit under-reported but we are not unusual
across the city. We have no bias in our policy
regarding registrations, our lists are open and as long as you live in
our practice area we hope that patients will
register with us. There is active competition for new registrations and
as far as I know there are no closed lists in
the city. There is no problem in getting responses to advertisments for
new partners. The city is relatively small
but is a good place to live with the facilities of a much larger place
thanks to the tourist and heritage industry and the
University as well as an increasingly important science based industry.
There is still an awareness of the events
of 1190 and the Jewish massacre - but it was rather a long time ago and
there has been a lot of bloodletting
since then - Wars of the Roses, Civil War etc. York remained a backwater
for many years and we did not
attract a lot of immigration in the post war years because frankly there
wasn't much to attract people, the
heavy industry being railways and chocolate!
When my wife and I were looking for somewhere to live 29 years ago we
thought Yorkshire, because this
is where we both went to University, plumped for York because it seemed
a pleasant city and have seen no
reason to regret our decision since.
I don't think we are institutionally racist in the city but we are in
the fortunate situation that it is a place that
people actively want to live and work and so GP registrars in particular
like to stick around and work here.
We have three registrars at present, one British, one from Shri Lanka
and one German.
I can understand Martin Goldman's opinion of the city - he is right -
there is insularity here - but I hope we
have moved on from the Middle Ages (except in the buildings.)
Allan Harris
PS I'm Welsh but no-one has ever held it against me.
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