Celebrating his centenary year, this is the closing part of an address given to members of the BMA in Wales by Dr. Lloyd-Jones in 1973. It appears in Healing and Medicine, published by Kingsway.
I put in a plea for a new order, for a new conception of general practitioners, and in addition, general consultants as well. As a young man I worked for some six years with Lord Horder. He was not a specialist in any one department. He was a general consultant, and that was, I think, the genius, the great value of the man.
A watchdog and a guide
So then, what is the general practitioner or the general consultant to do? I would say that his main function is to keep an eye on the experts. Have you heard Marshall McLuhan's definition of a specialist? He says that a specialist is one who never makes a small mistake while moving towards the grand fallacy. He never makes small mistakes. But what about the grand fallacy! So that is the first business of the general practitioner - to keep his eye on the expert. He does not finish with the patient when he sends him to the expert. Follow him on, keep an eye on him, help the patient decide. It is a terrible thing for a poor patient to have to decide whether or not to have an operation advised by the special. The general practitioner is to be there by his side, and to help him. And he is to keep an eye on the treatment of the whole man, when the specialist tends to look at only part of the man. What are the guiding principles?
