Working as a GP in 2022 brings Dr Laura Marshall-Andrews deep joy and pride, but it also scares the living hell out of her. She greets me in the waiting room of her Brighton practice, a tall building on a shopping parade close to the beach, and we climb up to a consulting room, where through an open window come sounds of drunk men and seagulls. Though I’m sitting in the patient’s chair, today it’s the doctor who will tell me what’s wrong.
It is a particularly difficult time to be a GP. The British Medical Journal reports that police see an average of three violent incidents at surgeries every day. Not long ago, at an appointment, a patient tried to strangle Marshall-Andrews. Last year, Sajid Javid joined a Daily Mail campaign demanding that GPs restore pre-Covid working practices, promising to “name and shame” practices that offer too many video appointments. Increasing numbers of doctors are quitting, citing stress. In 2019, Boris Johnson promised to increase the number of GPs in England, but in fact it has fallen. The doctors remaining are struggling, which means Marshall-Andrews’s book, What Seems to be the Problem?, a memoir about her pioneering approach to frontline medical care, feels especially vital, and oddly hopeful.
