General Practitioner (GP)
Content
Description
General Practitioner (GP) or Family doctor (informal term) is a doctor who serves as the first point of contact for patients in the healthcare system, provides also long-term health care to patients:
- Keeps a patient's card
- Diagnose and treat common health problems
- Has overview of all the patient's diseases, previous surgeries, vaccinations and hospitalizations in the hospital
- Coordinates treatment with specialists
- Takes blood and urine for laboratory tests
- Prescribes medications
- Refers patients to specialists
Facts
- Examination in an outpatient clinic
- Examination lasts 30 minutes
A general practitioner is a specialist with training program from Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners.
Sometimes called a family doctor - often providing home visits and community care.
During the first examination, the general practitioner creates a patient-record, where all previous illnesses, surgeries and hospital stays are recorded. Also information about allergies and medications are taken.
Examinations that the general practitioner performs:
- Measurement of blood pressure, pulse, temperature
- Examination of the lungs and breathing (listens with a stethoscope)
- Palpation of the abdominal organs
- Samples: blood and urine for examination
- ECG - Electrocardiography of the heart
From these basic examinations, the doctor finds out a surprising amount of information about the patient's clinical condition.
General practitioner provides many important tasks :
- General medical advice
- Preventive examination and screening - prevention can diagnose diseases at an early stage, when the disease can be treated more easily. Preventive check-ups should be performed once every 2 years
- Long-term care - monitoring and adjusting treatment of chronic illnesses
- Prescription of medications
- Vaccination and revaccination of patients
- Serves as gatekeeper to specialist and hospital services
- Collects a discharge reports from the hospital
