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In message <[log in to unmask]>, Iain L M Hotchkies <[log in to unmask]> writes >With the Chief Medical Officer advocating the maintenance of >"medical excellence" on one hand, and the recruitment and morale >problem on the other, it is hardly surprising that high quality >candidates for practice vacancies are a little thin on the ground. > >Two solutions present themselves. Either we improve conditions to >attract the 'right' sort of doctor, or we lower our sights a degree >or two and start promoting 'medical mediocrity'. Quite so. I can see general practice becoming a dumping ground for those medical graduates who aren't either clever enough or motivated enough to get themselves a decent career. Is this part of the government's strategy to return the country to the "golden age" of the 1950s, which was a time when general practice was held in low esteem and wasn't particularly well paid? Perhaps we should sell our shiny new surgeries and set up in grotty converted shops or the ground floors of residential properties, abandon appointment systems, get rid of our computers and start to keep thin and illegible notes in wooden filing cabinets? I bet our patients would feel a warm glow of nostalgia as they turned up at 9.00am for the morning surgery and spent up to an hour and a half chatting to their neighbours (so good for strengthening community spirit), before they have a 2 minute consultation and leave clutching a prescription for a tonic or cough mixture. We could then shut up shop at about 11.00am and disappear to the golf course until the evening surgery from 4 till 6. (Alternatively, we could disappear to well-paid jobs in Tesco's or Sainsbury's, where the private sector would have attracted the best practitioners!) We would have to wear old-fashioned suits with waistcoats, carry an umbrella and Gladstone bag, and drive Ford Consuls. We could get rid of pagers, mobile phones and dictaphones (we would have one standard referral letter, scribbled on a piece of paper torn from a notepad: "Dear Doctor, re Mrs Bloggs, please see and treat"). One of the best things would be that we could make huge savings on our drugs budgets and it would be almost impossible to sue us for negligence because the knowledge and skill expected of the average GP would be so low that we could get away with minimal standards of clinical care. Is this a nightmare or what? Toby -- Toby Lipman 7, Collingwood Terrace, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne. Tel 0191- 2811060 (home), 0191-2869178 (surgery) %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%