According to the lockdown road map, if all goes to plan, life should be fully back to normal in June.

Schools, pubs, restaurants, leisure facilities, places of worship etc will all reopen, but will normality return to GPs’ surgeries?

While their hospital counterparts have braved the pandemic storm, my GPs have sheltered behind locked doors. My concern is that when the pandemic is over will they return to the old normal or, having tasted freedom from face to face consultations, continue with only discussing your ailments over the phone? Worse still, will they expect more patients to self diagnose using the tick box Doctor App algorithm?

Winston Churchill said ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ and my GPs, seeing an opportunity to change the system and reduce their workload, grasped this crisis with both hands.

In hindsight, as they have already offloaded many services and procedures they previously undertook, I suppose this was to be expected!

Technology has a place in medicine, but the first step in diagnosing medical problems must always be face-to-face, hands-on consultations.

CONCERNED PATIENT