The Business of General Practice

Context and video options

Introduction

Even though nearly everyone uses General Practice, not everyone understands what it represents, or how it actually works. Other workers in the NHS might not have a clear idea and even staff who are working day-to-day in GP surgeries might not have a complete understanding.

As part of staff training, the partners and management at Ivy Grove sought to educate their own team on the ins and outs of General Practice, to provide important background context to the pressures facing GP surgeries, and why things are difficult not just for patients but also for GP teams. A presentation was made to the team by Dr Wong a week or so ago.

We have now updated this presentation and converted it to a video, so that we can share it with you, our patients, so that you all have an awareness of just what is going on and why what happens outside General Practice has such a huge impact upon it.

Because the video covers much of the scope of General Practice, and because explaining General Practice is actually not that easy, it's necessarily comprehensive. We strongly encourage you to spend some time learning more about General Practice, so that you can see behind the political soundbites and understand why GPs are up in arms, and why things are so difficult at the moment.

To help viewers, we have broken the video down into six individual pages for easier viewing. Feel free to watch in sequence, or just what you are interested in, though we do recommend you eventually take a look at all of the sections to gain a proper understanding of General Practice and current events.

Videos have been muted by default, feel free to switch the sound on or expand the video by clicking the relevant icons as the video is playing. Better results are obtained by rotating your mobile device to landscape mode. Use the video controls to pause the video if you need to.

The Business of General Practice (single video)

If you would prefer to watch this video in separate, shorter parts, start with part 1 here.

The Business of General Practice (39:54), Ivy Grove Surgery

Next steps

Your GP service is a vital part of the community - you might not fully appreciate this till you come to really need it yourself. The actions of government represent continued disinterest and disinvestment in the GP service, whose only purpose it seems right now is to provide vote-winning political soundbites. Expect more empty promises from all parties as the election approaches.

Our GP leaders are now working behind the scenes to determine the next steps in the formal dispute, so watch this space. We ask patients to keep an interest in what is happening with General Practice so that you know what your GP surgery is up to and why.

Rest assured, from all of the team here at Ivy Grove Surgery, we will continue to strive to provide high quality friendly family health care to all our patients. Take care.

Copyright

This video was written and designed © Dr M Wong, Ivy Grove Surgery, 2024. Please do not post the video elsewhere, on social media or on any other website, or duplicate, modifiy or share the video without permission. You may, however, freely share the link to this page, which is ivy.gs/business-of-gp.

Soundtrack is 'Odyssey' © Kevin MacLeod is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 .

Other resources

Please also visit our opinion page for more resources, or check out our much shorter State of General Practice and Politics of General Practice videos.

Disclaimer

All views expressed are the opinion of Ivy Grove Surgery, and are not endorsed by any NHS or government organisation, however all information presented within can be fully corroborated by those inclined to do their own research. In doing so, readers are therefore very welcome to come to their own conclusions about what is currently happening in the NHS and in particular, General Practice.