Today our two carers turned up on time and this always gets us off to a good start in the day. After breakfast, we knew that we were going to journey down the hill, although to be fair the weather seemed a little threatening. Once down in Waitrose, we met up with two of our three friends and had a jolly time as we were looking forward to Christmas with the most of the major tasks such as Christmas shopping behind us. For lunch today, I was not absolutely sure what we were going to have so I raided the freezer and discovered something unlabelled but it appeared to me to be a salmon risotto. Anyway, that got rescued and then heated up and supplemented by some curly ale which in truth was not very nice. We do eat kale but the superb variety which has especially bred ('Cavolo Nero')is delicious with. slightly nutty flavour and I actually bought some in my Friday shop. After lunch, we watched quite a bit of an André Rieu concert. I can quite see how classically trained musicians turn their noses up at these kinds of performances with the audience members and performers in flamboyant attire and much dancing in the aisles. But one has to say that if you were actually present in one of these concerts, you would find the atmosphere infectious and would probably end up having a really good time. It might be the judicious use of camera shots but the impression generated is that people really enjoy this kind of concert experience. After this, we started to watch a Wallace & Grommit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit which is evidently a kid's style of entertainment. I am not sure whether Meg followed all of the twists but in this story but towards the end we were interrupted by the doorbell. It turned out to be the Asian neighbour who lives in the house opposite the greened area in or little community. She had popped across with a Christmas and. Christmas gift for Meg and myself which was very welcome and left underneath the tree. The neighbour and I exchanged some thoughts about the Christian story both in our religion and also in Hinduism and Islam. Our neighbour told us that one occasion, she decoded to read some of the New Testament story. Something that made us both smile was the fact that whereas in the Christian bible we have the story of the magic multiplication of a few loaves and fishes sufficient for the 'Feeding of the 5000' a similar story has found its way into the holy writings of some of the Asian religions. But what made us both giggle was the fact that in the Asian stories the leaves and fishes have been replaced by chapatis!
The government is planning to bring back the family doctor by giving GPs an extra £889m to spend time with patients in a bid to end a dispute.Under proposals for the new GP contract for 2025/26, which is being consulted upon now, GPs would be incentivised to ensure patients most in need see the same doctor every time. The government said it will provide an extra £889m on top of the existing GP budget to help slash red tape so doctors can do their jobs. Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said the plan is also to reduce the number of 'outdated performance targets' from 76 to 44 so GPs can spend more time with patients. GPs who are members of the British Medical Association (BMA) are currently in a period of 'collective action', voted on in August, as they say their annual budget increases over the past five years have fallen well below inflation - making it difficult for doctors to meet the rising costs of operating practices - and driving hundreds of surgeries to close. One would have thought that this government move would be very much in line with the expectations and wishes of patients who have often expressed the desire to see one 'family doctor'. But I can foresee lots of difficulties in implementing these ideas. The concept of the family doctor probably dates from the 1950's where doctors worked as single handed practitioners or sometimes in pairs. But today, doctors are often in a group practice with as many as 10 doctors, not to mention 'physician associates' If patients were to be given a choice, they would always choose the most experienced and/or the doctor perceived as the most competent and sympathetic and under these circumstances, some doctors would sought after by many of the patients and some not chosen by many (or indeed any) So how is this going to be managed? Allocating patients to a doctor not of their own choosing could well be a recipe for disaster and be another source of dissatisfaction. As a parallel argument, when I was a teacher in higher education, each student was allocated to a tutor who was meant to be their personal tutor and the academic to whom the student would turn if there were problems of a non-academic nature that needed some resolution. But these systems never worked and in practice, students sought out those tutors with whom they felt they could share a confidence and tutors acquiesced in this. A practical problem which could well arise, for example, is that a female student experiencing any gynaecological issues of any kind would probably not feel comfortable talking to a male (particularly unmarried) tutor about this and would seek out a female tutor and one can quite understand why. So returning to the 'family doctor' idea, I wonder how this is going to be put into practice and I have the feeling that whatever scheme is introduced will fall some way short of patient expectations.
Now that Christmas is almost upon us, I am very struck by the stress that Christmas can induce (and there is a parallel argument for summer holidays as well) The amount of running around (shopping, gift exchanges, cards, visiting relatives and so on) may be entirely disproportionate to the eventual amount of pleasure derived. I am also very conscious that it is the women of the household to whom the strain and the extra preparations for Christmas is the greatest. Without wishing to sound too curmudgeonly about all of this, whilst we all need a mid winter break, I can understand why the enforced jollity and celebrations over Christmas can prove too much for many. I would exclude families with young children from these strictures because the Santa myth lives on and with good reason.