GOOD to hear from the first woman president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Prof Jackie Taylor ("Our doctors and nurses need better support", Agenda, The Herald, December 11) that her priorities are workforce, their health and welfare and inclusivity. She also plans “to bring the interests of doctors in training to the centre of college activities”. Of course, in the college, she will spend most energy on those who intend a specialist career.
As a consultant geriatrician, along with GPs, she is one of the few remaining specialist generalists. It could be said that most of her younger colleagues prefer to be expert in narrower and yet narrower clinical fields – less to keep up with and focused options for research topics. She knows that while younger patients may have one disease, the majority of those seen in clinics and as in-patients are older with two or more acute or chronic conditions.
GPs have the task with their patients and carers of managing the uncertainty of new symptoms and explaining risk. When symptoms and ill health defy a diagnosis in primary care, it can be difficult to know to which speciality to refer. Good generalists available to refer to were invaluable and they often could factor in psychological and behavioural aspects, saving over-investigation. Perhaps colleges are encouraging physicians towards acute general medicine and to keep up their generalist skills alongside their specialism. Patients will benefit from that whether being assessed with acute illness on the day or when they need specialist opinion or investigation.
Dr Philip Gaskell,
Woodlands Lodge, Drymen.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel