ABSTRACT
General practice has a key position in the provision of health care under the British National Health Service. On the one hand, it provides free of charge primary care to the vast majority of the population. On the other hand, the general practitioner (GP) acts as a gatekeeper and controller of access to a range of expensive hospital specialist services. The aim of this chapter is to examine changes that have taken place in general practice over the last twenty years and to identify the major influences on this development. More specifically, the intention is to attempt to develop a sociological account of the development of general practice, drawing on the literature about medicine as a profession. Work in this area has traditionally conceptualized medicine as an occupation which has obtained and maintains professional status. However, it has tended to focus mainly on hospital specialist medicine and has neglected other branches like general practice, which have developed less quickly. In this chapter, we want to rectify this situation and consider the extent to which these sociological perspectives adequately explain development in general practice over the last twenty years.
