One doctor in a village with his own practice. This is how we know the ‘old-fashioned’ medicine. But this way of working is no longer popular with a new generation of general practitioners. For example, you often need two or three new GPs for a departing GP, because the doctors consider time for your private life at least as important. The result: a shortage of doctors. And that while the demand for care is increasing in our aging province.
GPs have to deal with a high workload, threatening patient stops and sometimes less time for the patient. This image of the profession of general practitioner makes it unattractive for many beginners to start their own practice.
That image has to change. “In fact, we have to get rid of that image. It is not correct,” says Ron Wissink of Huisartsenzorg Drenthe. Self-management and running a practice the way you want it could well be ‘the medicine’ to solve the shortage of general practitioners in Drenthe, says Ron Wissink in the TV Drenthe program De Staat van Drenthe.