Like all great P.G.\u2019s \u2013 Wodehouse, for example, or for those\nless keen on literature and more on breakfast tea, Tips will suffice \u2013 the\nrural P.G. is a cherished national icon and fills us with good humoured reverence.\nNow, following many months amongst a number of the rural P.G. subspecies, Rustica P. Generale<\/em>, I think I have some\npearls of wisdom I am ready to share out with those who will care to listen.\nRead well if you are possessed of curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do we hold such a cherished image of the \u2018country\ndoctor\u2019, the \u2018family doctor\u2019, etc.? Are there doctors practising today that\nembody it \u2013 is it now just an image, or does it live on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are the essential characteristics of R. P. Generale<\/em>? How might we examine one\nwe have caught out in the countryside and distinguish it from peers we snared on\na busy urban street?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Appearance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rustica P. Generale<\/em> used to be readily identifiable. Firstly, like all doctors, only the male ever survived to practise. Secondly, they wore a three-piece suit in tweed. Nowadays there might be more ladies than gentlemen, the tweed has vanished, and the modern Rustica<\/em> is only known for certain by situation. There is no reliable sign that the doctor you have snared is the right one. Rustica <\/em>is old or young, male or female, and any skin colour. There are not many of them left \u2013 their numbers are decreasing in the wild, and none have been yet captured for museum exhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Character<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here I refer to my own experience, since Rustica<\/em> is a diverse breed. But in my\nexperience any member of the species will be happy to see you. They have a\ntremendous sense of hearing and so are excellent listeners. They have a deep\nwell of empathy, and a sense for your wellbeing. If you are a patient, they\nwant to see you get better \u2013 if you are a fledgling student, they often\nencourage you or teach you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, if you are lucky this is true of any doctor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What sets them apart is their knowledge of their habitat.\nEach hamlet and village is known to them. The clans and families \u2013 in Wales\nthis means the Jones\u2019, the Edwards\u2019, the Pughes\u2019, etc. etc. \u2013 often these\ndoctors have an idea of who knows who. They handle a larger area than their\nurban brothers and rove to and fro across a wider territory. They will see children\ngrow up and have their own children in turn; they see us grow old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stereotype<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Their appearance and manner have changed \u2013 everything changes eventually \u2013 but there is a core to the care delivered by P. Generale<\/em> \u00a0that resembles the best in our images of \u2018our doctor\u2019. Many of us never reach deep into the huge branching tree of specialty medicine: we only see our P. Generale <\/em>and rarely (if ever) their hospital counterpart. There was never a stereotype for P. Generale <\/em>\u00a0having the white coat, brisk step and terrifying manner which was the clich\u00e9 image of their hospital cousins. The Rustica<\/em> stereotype (besides the tweed) was in the impression that they would be there for you, that they knew you. That they were not frightened by what was happening to you and that they would do their best to help you. The image of the family doctor has them looking after your grandmother\u2019s heart, your baby\u2019s croup and your aunt\u2019s high cholesterol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, not all of this is specific to them. Many, many\ndoctors do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The difference might be in that more<\/em> of the Rustica<\/em> are this way. This setting and the commitment to longstanding care \u2013 the complete opposite in general terms of hospital care, where the aim is to get you better and get you home \u2013 seems to select for doctors interested in seeing patients change over time, and doctors that want to establish a longer lasting bond with their patients. So this is not something that sets them apart; but perhaps if, using some huge and strong net, one caught only doctors that thought this way about their patients \u2013 if you only swept up doctors that had this kind of interest in the broader setting and wellbeing of their patients \u2013 I would say hopefully that Rustica P. Generale<\/em> would be well represented in the net.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you do make such a net and catch them, I urge you to release them back into their natural habitat. They are eager to get back to their busy lives, and who knows what their patients\u2019 care would be like without them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been studying for some time the noble and gentle species of doctor which is today properly named the Practitionerum Generale \u2013 I think the popular […]","protected":false},"author":1592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/carer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/555\/2019\/04\/john-sassall-698x1024.jpeg\")