Global primary care is local primary care

[摘要] My childhood hero from the British television series, Doctor Who, is a traveller in time and space, who claims to be a ‘citizen of the universe’.1 With such a literally cosmopolitan2 ethic, The Doctor was incapable of ignoring injustice anywhere he/she (it’s complicated!) came across it. Even with such a ‘woke’ role-model, I regret that I used to get annoyed with colleagues more focused on international than domestic concerns — there is, after all, so much local need and controversy in the UK primary care setting. When we are struggling here, why should we care what happens there? And yet, the first 20 years of the century have more than demonstrated that it is no longer possible to maintain a geographically or professionally insular attitude to practice. The selection of articles for this issue’s Life &Times is influenced by the concurrent joint conference of the RCGP and WONCA (29 June to 1 July 2022), but remains relevant to all of us, because, like it or not, practitioners in primary care must now be global in their outlook.‘GLOBAL’ IS NOT PURELY A GEOGRAPHICAL ADJECTIVE Our book reviews this issue remind us that ‘global’ is more than a geographical adjective when it comes to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of GPs and the wider primary care team. John Spicer dusts down an old philosophical classic, ‘On Bullshit,’ and arms us against the carefree and careless untruths of national politics.3 Trish Greenhalgh suggests we learn from other disciplines about the folly of taking an overly reductive, one-variable-at-a-time view of the world and mistaking it for the highest form of science.4 Pearce Cusack takes a deep dive into the medical humanities with an anthology of literary writing by Iain Bamford.5 All remind us of the holistic approach considered an essential feature of family medicine by WONCA.2 This approach must have time and space for dreams and logic.

[学科分类] 卫生学