General Practice in Medicine

[The Special One]

Are you going to be a GP or a specialist? Australia needs more GPs but everyone I know doing med wants to be a specialist.

If I ended up doing med I would have been a GP a family doctor or something, money doesn't interest me.

Law isn't really my passion med is but life didn't end up that way for me for one reason or another.

Good luck I wish you all the best for your med journey.

MOD EDIT FOR CONTEXT: this topic was split from Quantum44's journey journal

[vox nihili]

Are you going to be a GP or a specialist? Australia needs more GPs but everyone I know doing med wants to be a specialist.

If I ended up doing med I would have been a GP a family doctor or something, money doesn't interest me.

Law isn't really my passion med is but life didn't end up that way for me for one reason or another.

Good luck I wish you all the best for your med journey.

This is all extremely laudable and I agree with you 100%. General practice is a really important area of medicine and, in my view, one of the most challenging.
I'm only making a comment here though to clarify that GPs are themselves specialists. To qualify as a general practitioner nowadays it is expected that you have done specialist training in general practice and achieved a fellowship of the Royal Australian College of GPs. This is obviously really technical, but I think it's really important to change the way we talk about GPs, because language like "GPs and specialists" fails to recognise a GP's role as a specialist and leads people to believe they're less important, which as you've rightly pointed out is very far from the truth!

If anyone wants to discuss this further I can split off a thread, but am edging dangerously close myself to derailing this one!

[The Special One]

@Vox yes that's very true what you I just split them up for simplicities sake as GP's and Specialists so there's a clear distinction.

I think splitting the thread would be a good idea personally, as there's good discussion to be had about this, and prospective med students may see the thread and give the GP path a second look.

[vox nihili]

@Vox yes that's very true what you I just split them up for simplicities sake as GP's and Specialists so there's a clear distinction.

I think splitting the thread would be a good idea personally, as there's good discussion to be had about this, and prospective med students may see the thread and give the GP path a second look.

Have split the thread and added a comment to your original post for the sake of context.

[Quantum44]

Are you going to be a GP or a specialist? Australia needs more GPs but everyone I know doing med wants to be a specialist.

If I ended up doing med I would have been a GP a family doctor or something, money doesn't interest me.

Law isn't really my passion med is but life didn't end up that way for me for one reason or another.

Good luck I wish you all the best for your med journey.

MOD EDIT FOR CONTEXT: this topic was split from Quantum44's journey journal

Yeah most people seem to want to go into specialities other than general practice. I certainly wouldn’t rule out being a GP (particularly in a rural area), although at the moment I’m more interested in neurology.

[The Special One]

Has a thought that may encourage more GPs.

Increase the cap on places slightly but have those new places in med school reserved for those who want to become GPs. Tailor the course so they can't change midway and specialise in something else so it's fair.

Works in theory as I'm sure many would be happy with this system including myself, but I have thought about some of the ramifications of doing something like this.

Overall though I think the pros outweigh any cons.