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The real conspiracy of NHS England

That got your attention, didn’t it? Perhaps a story has crystallised in your mind already.

We all knew it. The government and NHS England have been plotting to systematically destroy general practice. With sympathetic nods and public-facing pledges to try harder, they’ve been taking back our contracts – only to throw them in the fire when our backs are turned, gleefully stroking beards as they watch plumes of smoke erupt from their ivory towers.

It’s a seductive story isn’t it?

But it’s fake news. As a trainee and avid follower of the headlines, I shared these concerns. But I’ve spent the last year as a clinical fellow in NHS England, and I’ve been searching for some hint of conspiracy to destroy general practice.

I expect to get a kicking for this, but I want to lay out some truths. As is often the case, the truth makes for far less juicy reading, so do feel free to switch to Trump’s Twitter feed.

You see, I’ve dispelled some myths of my own this year. I’ve found no hidden agenda to destroy the partnership model. There’s no secret plan to sell us off as salaried slaves to super-partnerships, or knock us down so hungry hospitals can devour us whole. They’re not lying through disingenuous teeth when they say, ‘if general practice fails, the NHS fails’.

They don’t always get it right. They know that a glossy plan won’t matter if it’s not felt in our consulting rooms. But far from being soulless zombies working at the whim of politicians, I can now see they’ve got some of the toughest gigs in the profession.

They don’t have the ability to take to the airwaves, point fingers, and rally the troops with cries for more resources. Or the everyday ‘thank you’s from patients that help us to persevere when tasked with the impossible. And any positive progress or deflected problems often slip under the radar.

But having internalised the same passion we have for shoring up general practice, they toil on. They walk tight ropes in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. And knowing that we’ll never feel like it’s happening fast enough, or going far enough, to keep ahead of rising demand.

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Pulling back the curtain, I can now appreciate the delicacy and complexity of the constraints they work within. We’re living through unprecedented political instability, with no ‘magic money’ tree to shake, huge pressures on primary care, and plummeting professional morale. So those sweet spots of where change needs to happen, that seem so glaringly obvious from the outside, are smaller than we might think.

But if you look at the headlines, you’d struggle to believe there’s anything positive happening at all.

Across the world, fake news is having a moment. It feels like we’re increasingly prioritising the deceptively simple over the honestly complex, the visceral over the rational, and making judgements based on summaries of summaries.

Our declining deference to experts, rising scorn for the political establishment, and tendency to lock ourselves in social media echo chambers where opinions are confirmed with breath-taking confidence, rather than challenged, are increasingly blurring the lines between fact and fiction. And the less attention we pay to facts, the more ‘non-facts’ are being deployed.

I’m beginning to worry that general practice is heading down the same path. Doctors are often discerning when it comes to assessing evidence. We remember those lovely funnel plots from medical school, and we’re quick to spot publication bias. But do we apply the same diligent consideration to the headlines in general practice?

Chronic, unfocussed criticism, generalised and amplified in echo chambers, is harmful. And I think we’re at risk of tipping the balance. There’s a sense that it’s now being embedded in the psyche of the profession, spilling over to our trainees, and subtly altering perceptions of our career, at a time when we need them more than ever before.

Criticism is like our body’s inflammatory response to injury. When it’s acute and targeted, it’s helpful. It signals where the insult is so a response can be deployed. But when that inflammation becomes chronic and self-perpetuating, it can cause lasting damage- and damage that continues long after the original insult has been dealt with.

I think this matters. Because there’s a fine line between passionately defending our profession, and inadvertently being part of the problem. And there are consequences of crossing that line. At best, nothing changes, and we’ll continue to wallow in our collective sea of cynicism. But at worse, we drown in a spiral of negativity and, worst of all, deny others the privilege of joining our field in the process.

And those repercussions will continue long after today’s headlines wrap tomorrow’s fish and chips.

Dr Nishma Manek is a GP trainee in London and is the national medical director’s clinical fellow at NHS England