Academic general practice: a viewpoint on achievements and challenges.

Abstract

Service general practice is supported by three academic systems: the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), university general practice, and the GP deaneries. Having been privileged to hold senior posts in all three branches of academic general practice simultaneously, I offer a highly personal, helicopter view of its achievements and challenges and the big questions of our day. #### Service general practice Service general practice has evolved in one lifetime from a singlehanded, untrained service, like my grandfather’s and father’s, working from home, into a vocationally-trained, multidisciplinary service mainly in purpose planned premises, with world-class computing. No British profession has evolved faster while retaining such high patient/client satisfaction. ### RCGP The College turned general practice from a craft into a discipline. RMS McConaghey, a service GP, established the College Journal as the first scientific journal of general practice in 1961,1 before there was a professor of general practice in the world. The College still edits and publishes the British Journal of General Practice . The College Council crossed the boundary into universities, providing the first professor of general practice in the world,2 the first GP professor in Canada, England, Ireland, and the first in a postgraduate university department. It created vocational training, steering it into law. It established the Scientific Foundation Board, a rare GP/primary care-focused research fund. College leadership identified four young GPs, who, 30 years later included the first GP president of the GMC and the first GP Chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AMRC). Is this happening today? The College established the first patient group in any British medical institution. Initially, salaried academic GPs were excluded from the NHS distinction award scheme, through blatant discrimination. GP professors complained bitterly, but were helpless. I solved this problem with the help of the Joint Consultants Committee (JCC) and the AMRC, only …