Laboratory Services in General Practice

Abstract

Whatever else we may think about the role of the general practitioner as a medical friend who accepts responsibility for continuing care' or a protector of the public against the excesses of specialised technocracy,2 nowadays the first need of the patient at home, almost as much as in hospital, is for a doctor who is up-to-date with his diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. Over the past three decades the therapeutic horizon has widened so rapidly that if general practice is not to wither away (as it appears to be doing in the United States), the established practitioner will need to be given every possible encouragement to keep up with recent advances in medicine, and the newly qualified practitioner provided with the facilities which will enable him to carry into the community the scientific skills he acquired during his training. Of all recent changes in the practice of medicine, perhaps the most striking has been the phenomenal increase in the use of laboratory services. The increase is in part due to ever-widening research interests (as knowledge expands contact with the unknown expands) but it is also clearly related to therapeutic advances. Diagnostic refinement is now a great deal more than an intellectual exercise. It is essential for