An image of a dead canary in a carbon monoxide filled coal mine springs to mind when I think of the crisis affecting the GP workforce and NHS. As an experienced GP, researcher, and teacher from the Netherlands, I looked forward in 2015, to start working in the strongest academic primary care environment in the world. These last 2 years, the opportunities for GP research have indeed been better than in the Netherlands, but my overall impression is that, unfortunately, general practice itself is at the brink of collapse. I am not sure how my research would add to its sustainability. In this article, I briefly describe under what conditions GPs in the Netherlands successfully countered such crumbling forces and why academic structures in the Netherlands may have been more successful in supporting GPs.
Conditions
The first condition for good primary care and its teaching and training is a protective societal environment. To write that physicians in the UK do not perceive their government to be protective …