BMJ  2005;330:42 (1 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7481.42-a

Letter

Developing primary palliative care

Changed role of general practitioners has been taken into account

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—To say that general practitioners should be in the front line to provide palliative care, as Murray et al say in their editorial,1 is to misunderstand totally the changed role of general practice in primary care. From today most general practitioners in the United Kingdom will have given up their commitment out of hours, and the health boards must have made alternative on call arrangements.

General practice is responsible for 25% of the week's on-call; the other 75% is being covered by the new out of hours organisations. Between 6 00 pm on a Friday and 8 00 am on a Monday there are 62 hours of out of hours cover. A lot can happen in 62 hours.

A patient's general practitioner can be involved in setting up a care plan and can pass that information on to the out of hours service, but it is no longer . . . [Full text of this article]

Colin I Guthrie, general practitioner

1448 Dumbarton Road, Glasgow G14 9DW Grey_triken@hotmail.com


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Relevant Article

Developing primary palliative care
Scott A Murray, Kirsty Boyd, Aziz Sheikh, Keri Thomas, and Irene J Higginson
BMJ 2004 329: 1056-1057. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Murray, S. A, Boyd, K., Sheikh, A. (2005). Developing primary palliative care: Primary palliative care services must be better funded by both day and night. BMJ 330: 671-671 [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Out of hours services perhaps need review
john sharvill
bmj.com, 1 Jan 2005 [Full text]
Primary palliative care services must be resourced better by both day and night
Scott A Murray, et al.
bmj.com, 30 Jan 2005 [Full text]
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