Margaret McCartney: Are GPs specialists in life?

“I understand dark clouds, but I’m not a meteorologist . . . I understand addiction, but I’m not a rehab counsellor.” So run some of the quotes from a selection of well groomed GPs featured in a multimedia campaign by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. The campaign has been ongoing in the context of intense funding pressure and in election season, and the college is trying hard to explain what it is that GPs do. One of the posters says, “I’m not just a GP. I’m your specialist in life.” A specialist in life? Able to advise on clothing choices, holiday destinations, good sexual partners, great opera, and excellent gin? I’m good at only some of those, and my evidence is all anecdotal—so, while I like the idea, I think not. This looks to me like mission creep of the kind that potentially medicalises normal life. It also looks like an attempt to explain the almost unexplainable: what it is that GPs actually do. As a GP, I’m a community evidenceologist—practising, I hope, honest pragmatism between the many gaps. Generalism is the specialism and uncertainty the currency, with undifferentiated symptoms, along with possible symptoms and doubt as the stock-in-trade.