ABSTRACT
In 1979, N. C. H. Stott and R. H. Davis wrote a seminal paper entitled ‘The exceptional potential in each primary care consultation’, highlighting four components: the management of presenting problems, modification of help-seeking behaviour, management of continuing problems and opportunistic health promotion. The exceptional potential of general practice depends not only on consultations, but also on many other components of care. Consultations between practitioners and patients who are ill, distressed or who think they are ill are the cornerstone of practice, providing the starting points and turning points of care and involving decisions about the diagnosis and management of diseases from which almost everything else flows. The challenge for clinical generalists is to show that general practices working together are a cost-effective way of improving population health and well-being, reducing fragmentation of care, stemming overuse of emergency services and reducing health inequalities.
