Why Everything You Think About GPs Is Wrong

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This video is about something I've spent almost my whole career on the receiving end of: the quiet, stubborn stigma against being a GP.

In medical school, I remember lecturers telling our year, "50% of you will become GPs." I'm still not sure whether the pressure that followed was something they intended or something I built up in my own head, probably a bit of both. Either way, it settled over the year like an unspoken dare: to prove, to ourselves and to everyone else, that we wouldn't end up as a GP.

That feeling didn't stop at medical school. Rotating through hospital specialties as a resident doctor in central London, I'd mention I was considering general practice and often watch registrars and consultants react with a combination of surprise, disappointment, and shock, as though I were throwing something away.

I chose it anyway, and it was unequivocally the right decision for me. But the stigma is real, and it's everywhere: in my day-to-day conversations with patients, in the comments under my videos, in the press. And it isn't only patients. I've sat in clinic/A&E and heard specialists open a GP's referral with "wow, I can't believe they're referring this," or the ever-popular "classic GP referral", as if the whole of general practice could be summed up in an eye-roll.

So I made a video taking on six of the myths I hear most often, from "GPs only see coughs and colds" to "they just tell you to take paracetamol and come back in two weeks."

Two things struck me while making it. The first is how much of the skill of general practice is invisible by design - the needle-in-a-haystack work of the undifferentiated patient, where a cough is a cold in nineteen people and something far more serious in the twentieth.

But the deeper thread, running through nearly every myth in the video, is that what looks like a failing of individual GPs is almost always structural: the ten-minute slot, the workload well above what the profession calls safe, the empty waiting room that's empty for lack of funding, not lack of work. Pull on any of the six myths and you find the same thing underneath: not a lazy or lesser doctor, but a system asking the impossible and calling it normal.

My hope for this video is that it does two things at once: dispels the myths, and shows something of the breadth, the joy, and the real difficulty of the job. And that, eventually, we move toward a system that gives GPs the resources and support to do what we do best.

If that's the kind of thing you'd like more of, subscribe! I'll email when a new video goes up, with the notes and evidence that didn't make it on camera.

Until next time, Katherine

💭 What didn't make it on camera

In my view, much of the negativity around GPs boils down to one thing: a lack of time — time with patients, time to complete tasks, time to do the job properly.

At the core of this is the 10-minute appointment. Speaking to international colleagues, both at work and at conferences, they're often genuinely shocked when I tell them this is the UK standard. So how does the UK's 10-minute appointment actually compare to the rest of the world?

A 2017 systematic review of 67 countries found the UK ahead of only Austria and Germany among high-income countries, and an unpublished update suggests both have since overtaken us too; only Spain, where consultation times have fallen, still trails behind. Meanwhile Scandinavian countries, already at the top in 2017, have lengthened their appointments further since.

Tellingly, the case for longer consultations isn't really about patient demand — research suggests the benefit shows up more in reduced doctor burnout than in better outcomes. Dutch GPs work with 20-minute slots as standard and are baffled that we manage in 10; a leading New Zealand academic has already called the 15-minute appointment "very 20th century." If countries structurally similar to the UK have moved on, our 10-minute norm looks less like tradition and more like being left behind.
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Irving G, Neves AL, Dambha-Miller H, Oishi A, Tagashira H, Verho A, Holden J (2017) — International variations in primary care physician consultation time: a systematic review of 67 countries. BMJ Open, 7(10): e017902. 🔗 bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/10/e017902​

Kaffash J (2023) — GPs across the world: If 15-minute appointments are a '20th century' relic, is the UK prehistoric?Pulse. 🔗 pulsetoday.co.uk/…/gps-across-the-world​

🔍 Sources behind the video

What "full-time" really means

Hutchinson J, Gibson J, Kontopantelis E, Checkland K, Spooner S, Parisi R, Sutton M (2024) — Trends in full-time working in general practice: a repeated cross-sectional study. British Journal of General Practice, 74(747): e652–e658. 🔗 bjgp.org/content/74/747/e652 The study behind the "a session is really ~6 hours, not 4h10m" point. Average hours per session rose to 6.2 by 2021 — 49.2% more than the BMA's official session length — meaning six sessions a week now aligns with the NHS's 37.5-hour full-time definition.

Pulse (2024) — GP full-time definition should be six sessions per week, finds new study. 🔗 pulsetoday.co.uk/…/gp-full-time-definition-should-be-six-sessions-per-week-finds-new-study The news write-up of the study above — also your source for the increase in session duration itself (sessions running longer than the BMA's 4h10m definition).

Parisi R, Lau Y-S, Bower P, Checkland K, Rubery J, Sutton M, Giles S, Esmail A, Spooner S, Kontopantelis E (2024) — GP working time and supply, and patient demand in England in 2015–2022: a retrospective study. British Journal of General Practice, 74(747): e666–e673. 🔗 bjgp.org/content/74/747/e666 Your source for the change in male vs female working patterns: the decline in sessions was driven by male GPs (0.99 → 0.85), while the female median held roughly constant, 2015–2022.

The scale of the workload

British Medical Association — Pressures in general practice. 🔗 bma.org.uk/…/pressures-in-general-practice Supports Myth 3: ~6 million more appointments per month than in 2019, delivered with roughly the same number of GPs.

British Medical Association — Safe working in general practice. 🔗 bma.org.uk/…/safe-working-in-general-practice The professional safe-workload standard: no more than 25 patient contacts a day, in 15-minute appointments (Myths 4 and 5).

Pulse (2024) — GPs report average of 30 patient contacts per day. 🔗 pulsetoday.co.uk/…/gps-report-average-of-30-patient-contacts-per-day Source for average daily contacts running above the safe limit of 25. Headline says 30, but the article text reports 31 — 31 is the figure used in the script.

Burnout and reduced sessions

Royal College of General Practitioners — GP burnout response. 🔗 rcgp.org.uk/News/GP-burnout-responseSupports "37% of GPs are likely to leave the profession within five years."

Pay

British Medical Association — Salaried GP pay ranges. 🔗 bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pay/gp-pay/salaried-gp-pay-ranges Source for the DDRB-recommended salaried GP pay range of £76,000–£115,000 for 9 sessions (Myth 5).

What general practice is, and what it costs

NHS England — The medical training review, phase 1 diagnostic report. 🔗 england.nhs.uk/long-read/the-medical-training-review-phase-1-diagnostic-report Supports Myth 2's point that GP training is a full specialist pathway (≥10 years all in).

Health Service Journal — GP spend share at lowest point in a decade. 🔗 hsj.co.uk/primary-care/gp-spend-share-at-lowest-point-in-a-decade/7041206.article Supports the "less than 10% of the NHS budget" figure in Myth 2.