Personal Views
This is where I get to say a few things that may not be popular with everyone - if you're looking for political correctness, now might be a good time to turn away. But my personal views do influence how I approach my work as a private GP, so I hope you'll feel that they're relevant.
Health care has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father was a family doctor, as was my mother's father - and one of my sons has recently qualified as a doctor (he said proudly). Maybe it really does run in the family.
When I started my medical career, the NHS seemed the natural place to put my training to good use. And I still believe that the ideal of the NHS is truly wonderful - that quality health care should be available to all, irrespective of their means.
Sadly though, during the twenty years I worked in the NHS, I watched its decline with increasing despair. More and more bureaucracy, more and more political interference. I don't doubt that much of this was well-intentioned. But the effect has been to divert resources from patient care and to drive down staff morale. To say that both patients and staff are frustrated would be understatement. I have seen so many fine people - nurses, GPs, surgeons and many others - either leave the NHS for private practice or take early retirement. And I have seen so many patients suffer when they need not have done.
It's got to the point where I believe that the NHS itself is the patient, and that the patient is terminally ill. I'm not convinced that any of the Government's cash injections and 'initiatives' can restore its health.
I love being a doctor - helping people by means of my training and experience. (Yes, I know it's ironic that I was trained within the NHS, but that was then, when the NHS was the finest of its kind in the world, and this is now.) And I now believe that private practice is the only realistic way forward. It enables people to receive the highest quality of health care, simply because it enables health care professionals to provide it.
When I moved into private practice I didn't anticipate the level of demand there would be for the separate vaccination alternative to MMR. Given recent developments, I can only hope that our Government will rethink its stance on the issue, and allow separate vaccinations via the NHS, but this seems unlikely. Providing separate vaccinations, and ensuring that we have sufficient supplies, has become a very significant part of what we do, but I will not allow this to override our commitment to providing a full family doctor service.
Reading through the pages of this website, I can see that I sometimes rabbit on about the limitations of the NHS and the benefits of private practice. My apologies if it seems I'm pushing the line too hard - all I can say in my defence is that I'm a doctor, not a marketing man.
Thank you for reading these thoughts. I hope they help communicate my views on health care, and why I established the Northlands Practice.