Physical health indicators in SMI.

Abbt and Alderson remark ‘how little time we spend in general practice ... perhaps 8 weeks over an entire degree’ but at Imperial College London and probably at most other medical schools, this represents greater time allotted than for many other specialties. We suggest the focus in medical schools should shift towards improving the quality of general practice placements and promoting the integration of primary care and specialist teaching, rather than consuming more time in an already overstretched curricula. We feel that prestige has never been the main incentive for pursuing a specialty. Our own experience is that many medical students are attracted to a career in general practice because of other factors, such as a good work–life balance, continuity of care and career flexibility. With many GPs now concerned about their workload, this inevitably influences students and junior doctors in their career choices.2 Another key factor is the funding that a specialty receives: recently, the proportion of the NHS budget spent on primary care has decreased and the income of GPs has fallen. To recruit more GPs, medical schools should improve the quality of students’ experiences in their primary care placements. However by itself, this will not be sufficient to improve recruitment and the onus falls upon the NHS to once again make general practice a rewarding career for doctors.