General practice as a career

General practice has a central role to play in the organisation and delivery of care to patients within the NHS. This includes:

• Open access to care
• Personalised care
• High quality chronic disease management
• Reducing the need for specialist referral
• An improvement in the health of the public.

General practice is rightly seen as being at the very centre of the National Health Service. In one recent year nearly 300 million consultations with GPs took place which is nearly 90% of the work of the NHS. Research in a wide range of countries indicates that a strong primary care system is key to reducing morbidity and mortality. However, whilst general Practice is the centre of primary care, GPs have a different range of skills and roles to other primary care clinicians. The essence of all these skills are the skills of a medical generalist and a role which will become essential as society and medical care becomes increasingly technical and complex.

More careers information is available from the Royal College of General Practitioners website.