Christiaan Partridge is a Family Doctor, Photographer, football coach and cricket coach. Having picked up a camera at a relatively late stage in life, Christiaan has recently achieved a First Class Honours degree in Photography via the University of Chester.
As a promising young GP, enjoying and sailing through training, completing MRCGP and winning the prize for the best General Practice research project, life was good. A thriving village cricket career and a football team that were prepared to work around my on-call duties ensured my off-duty was fulfilling. But was it really? And how times have changed after 21 years of partnership in a GP surgery. How have my decisions at the outset of my career affected where I am now?
I sit here saying these things after going through months of what has proven to be a very difficult complaint process. This has been exacerbated by a lack of proper process and exceptionally poor procedure by NHS England over a complaint that, by peer reflection, should have been rejected as vexatious. This has caused me to reflect upon career and personal life decisions.
Back in the early noughties, life couldn’t have been much better from my own personal perspective. I was sailing through summative assessment and had a social life at the time that I was happy with, which included both sports and personal relationships. I had a very successful GP registrar year that culminated in an award for the best research project of all the GP trainees in my cohort. I continue to be very successful in my cricketing achievement; however, on reflection, this was at the cost of my personal relationships in which I allowed external influences to have too much control.
Having signed up to become a partner in a practice after only eight months of Locum posts, I felt that I had made the correct decision for my long-term career. However, after many changes within the GP contract, including moving the goalposts over pension contributions and changing responsibilities, it has become clear that where I intended life to be has fallen drastically short. Not only has our role as general practitioners changed significantly over this period, but our professionalism has also been questioned.
Having gone through the complaints procedure with both our regulators, the GMC, and NHS England, it is clear that our role as gatekeepers to the NHS is considered in the lowest possible manner. Over the past few months, it has become clear to me that as general practitioners, we are not valued. The services we provide are not considered important even though our roles as gatekeepers to secondary care remain key to the continuation of national health services. Never has our value been so denigrated by politicians and the public alike.
Over the past few months, witnessing the errors made by NHS England has made me feel that my value to the NHS has been questioned more. However, along with these feelings comes the realisation that the appreciation of the skills that I have to offer has also been denigrated. I have come to question decisions that I have made over this time, including personal decisions, career decisions, and financial decisions.
I have suffered both mental and physical illness as a result of my workload. I continue to work in a practice that values quantity over quality and has a work-life balance that is unsustainable. I am sure that I am not alone in this experience. It is unfortunate that I feel that I have several regrets over career decisions that I have made over this time period. However, there were promises by several governments that were not upheld.
Having explored new avenues whilst still working as at least a three-quarter-time GP, I have managed to complete and achieve a first-class honours degree in photography. This has not only acted as a form of stress management but also in terms of graphic design, and it has led me to some consultancy work. Our accumulation of skills as general practitioners and our life skills make us an invaluable part of the NHS system; however, over time, this has been continuously devalued and undermined. My accumulation of these skills has led me to consultancy work in my specialist interest field.
However, it is a disgrace to our nation that general practice is seen as such a low-quality profession when the truth is that we do 90% of the work for less than 10% of the NHS budget. This can only be rectified by the correct remuneration of the work that is actually carried out by general practitioners on a day-to-day basis. This needs to be acknowledged by those who have political influence. Otherwise, the cornerstone that we have of the NHS will be lost forever.
These factors lead me, and many others, to agree that we are all better off not working in the NHS. This makes job offers from abroad much more attractive, as they promise more pay, better quality of life, and more job satisfaction for a considerably higher income.
Personally, I have made many decisions that have, on reflection, cost me dearly in terms of my personal life and my professional development. But, as a good friend has said to me, I don’t recognise fully the value in myself. I have a keen interest in Respiratory Medicine, and I have used to do good for patients; my voluntary roles in sports are valued by the community in which I live.
It has been a time of deep reflection for me, having used the time to rest and recuperate, but also put together a CV, make connections, and have had support from other local GPs, but less so from my own practice. I can start to appreciate my value and have formulated a plan moving forward. I actually have many skills, ranging from management and leadership, medicine and finance, to those in photography and sports. I have opened my eyes to other career routes, which may take me away from General Practice.
I have recognized that the stress I have experienced caused both psychological and physical symptoms added to the already rising workload and has caused a period of burnout. The latest thinking is that this takes between 1 and 3 years to recover from and that the biggest contributing factor to the recovery is having control over your workload. I am returning to work now. The Occupational Health report that advises a phased return will be ignored, but at least I have put support mechanisms in place. A change of government has seen a change of attitude towards the NHS, but I fear it is too little too late. Unfortunately, it takes nine years to complete the qualification as a general practitioner here in the UK, and too many have left the profession already.
Christiaan Partridge, General Medical Practitioner
Christiaan Partridge is a Family Doctor, Photographer, football coach and cricket coach. Having picked up a camera at a relatively late stage in life, Christiaan has recently achieved a First Class Honours degree in Photography via the University of Chester. For the past 7 years, he has been a youth football coach and also an ECB Core Cricket Coach. Christiaan also has vast experience in running amateur sports clubs, specializes manly in Landscape Photography, with a particular interest in Therapeutic Photography to treat minor mental illness.
