Seeing the same family doctor over years is linked to lower death rates
General practitioners are the generalists of medicine, handling almost anything that walks in and deciding who needs a specialist. Their secret weapon is time: studies show that seeing the same GP repeatedly cuts hospital admissions and out-of-hours visits, and has even been found to reduce mortality.
A GP practises general medicine rather than a single specialty, treating a wide spread of conditions and judging when a patient needs someone with narrower expertise. Most of the work is outpatient care. The label is standard in Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries, where the word physician usually means a hospital specialist. In the United States the equivalent role is called a primary care physician, a slot shared with family doctors and internists.
What a GP actually does depends on where they work. City practices tend to concentrate on chronic illness, urgent but non-life-threatening problems, prevention such as immunisation, and coordinating referrals. Rural GPs may also attend emergencies before patients reach hospital, deliver babies, staff community hospitals and carry out minor surgery. Some work alone; others sit inside large multidisciplinary teams.
For a long time any qualified doctor working in the community counted as a general practitioner. Since the 1950s, however, general practice has become a specialty in its own right with extra training, and the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration laid the intellectual groundwork for primary care. Greece formally recognised it as a specialty in 1986 and now requires four years of vocational training after medical school. In the Netherlands, where the family doctor is called the huisarts, or home doctor, patients usually need a GP referral before they can see a hospital specialist.
Paths into the job differ widely. In India the basic degree takes four and a half years plus a compulsory year of rotating internship before permanent registration. A French médecin généraliste studies for six years at university, then spends years as a resident, and ends with a doctoral research project. French GPs also carry legal duties, from certifying injuries and deaths to signing sports certificates, and often visit children and elderly patients at home.
Source: General practitioner
