Why Everything You Think About GPs Is Wrong

Comments · 8

• SH

  @shad0wVA · 13 days ago (edited)

  Regarding the number of hours and the &quot;laziness&quot; argument, everyone is deserving of a healthy work life balance. And it&apos;s obvious when you&apos;re working above the guidelines for a health balance in a field where you have to be thorough even for &apos;routine&apos; complaints and being responsible for ensuring the right person gets the right care without a differential for a plethora of diseases, you&apos;re gonna have to cut your hours because it takes that much processing power to be able to identify a disease. Someone comes in with a cough for example, and you&apos;ll do a physical examination, previous history without access to advanced imaging equipment and to be able to identify signs of a serious illness. This could be solved by additional funding and turning our attention to the real cause of lack of GP hours and quotas, which are the structures that cause austerity and lack of funding within the NHS. The problem is that the NHS does not hire enough GPs to cover the work load, which then leads to those already working having to up their hours, which again is not sustainable and will end up with them having to reduce them at some point. It is frustrating as a patient, but it shouldn&apos;t be taken out on GPs. Even if you consider those who have dropped their hours, it&apos;s likely that they did this to avoid burnout after working more than they should have.<br><br>Just because the medical profession is a high paying field doesn&apos;t disqualify them from having a basic right to be able to have a healthy balance where they get to rest and enjoy life outside of work. I find that it&apos;s a bigger symptom of a class divide but it shouldn&apos;t be, it&apos;s an important field that has real value. As someone who comes from a working class background, I understand the sentiment for other jobs that don&apos;t really provide any kind of service or creation but being a doctor puts you in a position where you are actively responsible for the lives of many and it is so taxing. People also fail to understand that the salary is pro-rata as well, where no doctor working 3 days a week unless you&apos;re a private specialist is earning close to a 6 figure salary. <br><br>I&apos;m going into graduate entry medicine in 2028 (because im broke, but changes to LLE funding means that I can actually pursue it because they&apos;re covering living costs, I graduated in biomed in 2025) and am probably going to specialise in emergency medicine. I don&apos;t think I could handle the pressures of being a GP because of the sheer volume of patients and differentials that you have to perform on top of the work within the wider community. People have this misconception that emergency medicine is higher skilled when they both have their challenges. In comparison to the GP, emergency medicine is fairly straightforward because you&apos;re assessing and treating cases that are an immediate risk of life (In which the specific disease sets you&apos;re analysing are often much fewer and more pronounced than trying to identify a needle in a haystack as aforementioned) and then signposting to other specialities for underlying causes and long term management.

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• MI

  @mistsofthenexus76 · 2 months ago

  As a medical student, this just fills me with more respect for my GP and other GPs such as yourself. I hope this video cleared up others misconceptions so that others might see how much a GP does for them and behind the scenes. Please keep up the good work, and please know one person here appreciates what you do and the your resilience in the daily issues you have to deal with constantly.

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• RA

  @RapidestSugar95 · 2 months ago

  As a Contact Lens Optician, I end up yo-yoing between feeling content with my job and retraining as a GP. Simply for a wider breadth of practice. The main reason I’m hesitant is the fears of spending 10 years retraining when I’m already in my mid 30s.

• AS

  @AsimanyeSomacala · 2 months ago (edited)

  .im still young and interested in medicine but I need to make sure whether I want this.please help

• DE

  @derrickpangilinan · 2 months ago

  healthcare as it is, is insane.

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• AS

  @AsEverCameron · 2 months ago

  Isn&apos;t a GP working 4 days a week, 80% LTFT so in fact the same as someone working 5 days a week 8 hours a day? So it&apos;s not necessarily part time or are most GPs working less than that?

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