A generation ago, a doctor was a figure of respect, authority and trust, whilst patients were relatively uninformed and happy to defer to the medical expert. Compare this to the fate of today’s doctor, who looks up to see yet another patient advancing across the surgery with a fistfull of printouts from websites and patient forums, accompanied by a willingness to challenge whatever medical opinion they are given.
If that didn’t make the GP’s job hard enough, the NHS has now placed them in the frontline of the consumer empowerment trend, by giving patients the opportunity to rate their GP’s performance on a dedicated website. Patients uphappy with the service they receive from their GP will now have a public forum on which to express their grievances.
This presents GPs with a real ethical dilemma. Do they give their patients the best advice, even if this risks upsetting them – for example, telling a patient that they can’t have a particular drug or course of treatment – or do they do what will make them popular? Health Minister Ben Bradshaw draws the parallel between a visit to the GP’s surgery and Trip Advisor, but buying a holiday and securing the right healthcare advice are completely separate things. There are times when being a good GP means risking being unpopular, or at the very least, not giving the patient what they THINK they need. Equally, the patient – no matter how well informed they are – is not necessarily in the best position to decide what is best for them.
It will be interesting to see whether the opportunity to publically rate GP’s performances will have unintended consequences. Will more pills be doled out, more cases referred to expensive consultants and GPs foreced to compromise their professional or ethical principles, simply to keep patients happy? The art of crowd surfing has never looked so tricky.
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[...] Back to an old topic, but the changing dynamic between GP and patient is one of the most interesting manifestations of consumer empowerment. The funding of GP practices is now partly based on the results of the new GP Patient Survey. This means that a relatively small number of disgruntled patients, if they account for at least 60% of respondents, can cost a practice up to £10,000 in penalties, . Given the fact that patients with grievances are more likely to complete the Patient Study in the first place, this is a frightening expression of consumer power. Here’s the full story in yesterday’s Telegraph. [...]