supporting GPs and primary care

GPs are the original holistic practitioner in the NHS. You know how we all hanker after those days when your GP knew your family, understood your life situation and was able to give you lifestyle advice (like "go and have a holiday by the seaside") as well as prescribing bed rest or medicines?

At Get Well UK, we want to help free up GPs so that they have more time to be able to practice the medicine that they have been trained to provide. We think that for most patients, and for many GPs, an 8 or 10 minute appointment is not enough and that the system could be freed up by offering more time for appointments. But how can we do that?

Projects which integrate complementary therapies into primary care consistently show that one effect is that GPs workloads reduce: it makes sense.

If 30% of patients coming into your clinic have a musculoskeletal problem that you are probably not equipped to deal with fully, with many of them coming in week after week looking for your help and guidance... Imagine being able to refer them on to another Primary Care setting. They would come to you less for a few weeks because they are seeing another practitioner, and you don’t have to prescribe them as much medication. Not only that, you don’t have to refer them on to a hospital or Allied Health Professional.  And all being well, they will be significantly helped and not have to come back to your clinic for a while. And you can have the confidence that the practitioner is trained to understand if they are unable to help and how to refer a patient on. 

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