Back to the Limelight!

Primary care has been one of the best jobs in medicine, and it can be again. In fact, primary care must recapture its attraction for the next generation's best trainees....................

There are formidable challenges for graduating Medical students, backbreaking debts, and a need to establish themselves at that high point in life when most others have cozy incomes, so what can attract them more than a procedure oriented facility offering high income.

It is important that Primary care practice as it is looked upon today as gatekeepers of the Health system undergo some radical changes. It could start with making the Primary care practice more lucrative, better incentives and redesigning the system with a little creativity so that a Primary care Physician can take care of the patient with the disease as a whole instead of referring to specialists. In a recent article in NEJM by Thomas H. Lee, experts in Primary care debated on the issue and Roland suggested it would be worthwhile to adapt certain features of the UK. Primary care system.

With its combination of care for acute, undiagnosed illness and complex, multisystem disease, as well as the provision of extensive preventive care, all in the setting of a long relationship
built on mutual trust and knowledge, primary care has long been a deeply rewarding profession.
But in recent years, this once-extraordinary specialty has seen its ranks diminish as doctors struggle with an increasing amount of paperwork, the explosion of therapeutic options, and a dramatic expansion in preventive care responsibilities. Care is increasingly fragmented, leaving patients angry and doctors frustrated. What is needed is a reinvention of the system where continued trust can be the basis of care and not disappointment.

It is said ' In the era of specialisation the organ is saved but the patient sacrificed' we need to save the patient first and who could be better at that than the Primary care Physician.