What Is a Doctor? is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate about how we maintain an NHS that is both fit for purpose and free. Using stories and case studies from across his thirty-year career as a GP, Dr Phil Whitaker offers insight into the medical movements, political interference and societal changes that have transformed the role of doctor over the past three decades.
Much has altered for the better but, even when based on good intentions, an equal or greater amount has been damaging and threatens the sustainability of the NHS. In examining what it means to be a doctor today, this book also answers an accompanying question 'what is a patient?' – and how we can all take a more active role in our healthcare. And, looking forward, Dr Whitaker describes what might yet be done to restore the NHS and its capacity for properly patient-centred care.
"Phil Whitaker knows the business of being a doctor inside out, and his moving and thought-provoking memoir of how the job has changed is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the NHS"
DAVID NOTT, bestselling author of WAR DOCTOR
"A powerful account of what has happened to the bedrock of the NHS, the GP system. Whitaker gives us a series of subtle and graphic stories that illustrate the complexity of the doctor-patient relationship and of modern medical practice at the ground level . . . The book is essential - and highly readable"
HENRY MARSH
"If the NHS is to survive as a model of health-care for another 75 years, it needs thinkers and champions like Dr Whitaker to challenge policy and to ask how the system can reinvent itself. What is a Doctor? is a call to review, renew and revitalise the way we provide medicine, and to ensure that individualised care remains at the heart of the NHS"
