There seems an unusually strong disconnect between teaching, research, and practice here in the UK. GPs need to start redefining the content of their work themselves again; otherwise their jobs end up like the miners around Manchester.
- Professor Harm van Marwijk
"An image of a dead canary in a carbon monoxide filled coal mine springs to mind when I think of the crisis affecting the GP workforce and NHS. As an experienced GP, researcher, and teacher from the Netherlands, I looked forward in 2015, to start working in the strongest academic primary care environment in the world. These last 2 years, the opportunities for GP research have indeed been better than in the Netherlands, but my overall impression is that, unfortunately, general practice itself is at the brink of collapse. I am not sure how my research would add to its sustainability. In this article, I briefly describe under what conditions GPs in the Netherlands successfully countered such crumbling forces and why academic structures in the Netherlands may have been more successful in supporting GPs."