Use of an incubator in a group general practice.

Although in Britain hospital laboratory facilities are freely available to most general practitioners, some group practices have chosen to perform their own basic laboratory investigations.1-4 Such laboratory procedures, however, remain limited to only a few practices-probably for two main reasons: firstly, microbiologists' anxiety about the maintenance of quality control, and, secondly, general practitioners' disinterest. The chance acquisition of a redundant incubator from the local district hospital combined with the co-operation of the local microbiological department allowed us to study how these problems could be overcome in a group general practice.