The GP
JOHN ROWAN WILSON
With the general improvement in education, the old paternalistic concept of the doctor is becoming increasingly out of date. A new attitude towards the patient has to be built up, founded not on dictatorial instructions or the writing of incomprehensible prescriptions in dog Latin, but on a partnership between equal individuals. This will inevitably make certain demands on both parties to the transaction.
So far as the doctor is concerned, it is very largely a matter of tempering the detachment which is an important part of his professional training with a realisation that his patients are people like himself, who require some simple explanation of what he is doing in their in- terests. The patient, in his turn, needs to understand some of the difficulties which the practice of medicine involves.
This book by Mark Hodson is thus a most valuable attempt to resolve some of the diffi- culties involved in this new relationship. It is written by a man who spent his life as the best kind of general practitioner. It deals with all the main areas in which communication between doctor and patient so often falls sadly short of the ideal. And the solutions it pro- pounds are consistently civilised and hutnane.
Dr Hodson—who died before this book could be published—was a great believer in the British institution of the family doctor. He was not prepared to accept the view which has been gaining ground in America and the USSR that increasing technical advance has made the general practitioner into something of an anachronism. While he is prepared to accept that a good deal of the management of more complex conditions has now to be trans- ferred to a hospital environment, he believes that there is still a vast field of usefulness for the family doctor in the treatment of common . psychiatric conditions.
While the first half of the book is mainly concerned with the doctor's problems, the second half is directed towards the patients. It explains simply and lucidly such matters as the ethical rules which govern medical prac- tice and the doctor's special position in rela- tion to the law. It concludes with some invaluable practical advice concerning human relations in times of crisis. The last three chapters, on the anxious parent, the sick child, find the care of the dying, are alone worth far More than the modest price of the book.
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