General Practice Under The National Health Service 1948 1997

This is a history of general practice under the National Health Service, covering the whole of the first 50 years, from 1948 to the present.

This unique work represents the recording and analysis of oral history interviews conducted by the pioneering general practitioner Dr Hetty Ockrim with over seventy patients, as well as office staff and members of the nursing team, between 1989 and 1992 in her former practice in the Ibrox/Govan areas of Glasgow, places of significant socio-economic deprivation. Her focus in undertaking this study was on personal and social, rather than just clinical, issues. The interviews are accompanied by background and commentary for the study, reflecting the full breadth of general practice. Many of the interviewees had memories stretching back before the NHS, providing a unique historical perspective of service development, as well as invaluable directions for improving current and future general practice. Key Features Provides a historical context for the developments in health over several decades prior to the study Shows how oral history methods have increasingly been used in medical history research and explores the benefits of this approach Covers many of the themes of the oral history which enabled and encouraged patients to comment on what was important to them in their encounters with health care Follows the increasing acceptance of women in medicine, demonstrating how women doctors were viewed by patients within the practice compared to changes in wider society Presents a ‘history from below’, using voices that are not normally heard in the medical discourse, illustrating the importance of the doctor–patient interface Supporting a wider understanding of what patient narratives can tell us about the delivery of health care from the perspective of the patients, the front-line users of health services, the book show how oral history can provide an understanding of health care more broadly, key at a time when social inequality is once again widening in many regions.

This book charts the journey of British General Practitioners (GPs) towards professional self-realisation through the development of a political consciousness manifested in a series of bruising encounters with government. GPs are an essential part of the social fabric of modern Britain but as a group have always felt undervalued, clashing with successive governments over the terms on which they offered their services to the public. Explaining the background to these disputes and the motives of GPs from a sociological perspective, this research casts new light on some defining moments in the creation of the modern British state, from National Health Insurance to the National Health Service, and the history of the British medical profession. It examines these events from the point of view of the professionals intimately involved in and affected by them, using both established sources, like Ministry of Health records, an in-depth analysis of rarely studied records of professional bodies, and previously unresearched archive material. The result is a fascinating account of conflict and cooperation, and of heroic, and less-than-heroic, defiance of political authority, involving interactions between complex personalities and competing ideologies. Scholarly yet readable, this book will be of interest to the general reader as much as to medical practitioners and historians.

Market prescriptions -- The real cost of market prescriptions -- Privatising the NHS: an overview -- Hospitals -- Primary care -- Long-term care for older people -- Overcoming opposition -- The emerging health care market.

The first collective record of the evolution of general medical practice as an academic discipline over half a century. This anthology captures the stories of the early struggles to set up university departments between visionary supporters and traditionalist blockers as well as the steadily increasing successes aided by a dedicated funding system. The accounts are written where possible by the people involved in the early developments of their subject. These tales are of vision, commitment and resilience and are interesting both in their own right and for the more general lessons they tell us about the processes of creating institutional change within a modern democracy.

An engaging, inclusive history of the NHS, from its surprising survival over the decades to today's crises

"This book discusses the role of motherhood in psychoanalysis, and how this contributed to the British welfare state in the first half of the twentieth century"--

Histories of medicine and science are histories of political and social change, as well as accounts of the transformation of particular disciplines over time. Taking their inspiration from the work of Charles Webster, the essays in this volume consider the effect that demands for social and political reform have had on the theory and, above all, the practice of medicine and science, and on the promotion of human health, from the Renaissance and Enlightenment up to the present. The eighteen essays by an international group of scholars provide case studies, covering a wide range of locations and contexts, of the successes and failures of reform and reformers in challenging the status quo. They discuss the impact of religious and secular ideologies on ideas about the nature and organization of health, medicine, and science, as well as the effects of social and political institutions, including the professions themselves, in shaping the possibilities for reform and renewal. The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500-2000 also addresses the afterlife of reforming concepts, and describes local and regional differences in the practice and perception of reform, culminating in the politics of welfare in the twentieth century. The authors build up a composite picture of the interaction of politics and health, medicine, and science in western Europe over time that can pose questions for the future of policy as well as explaining some of the successes and failures of the past.