Making a Difference, One Patient at a Time

As 2025 draws to a close, many of us in primary care will once again find ourselves ending the year with that familiar blend of pride, exhaustion and quiet disbelief that we’ve somehow kept the show on the road. It has been another demanding year for UK general practice. Workload pressures have remained unrelenting, clinical complexity continues to rise (“Santa, all I want for Christmas is a sore throat and a pill repeat!”)  and the system around us often feels stretched to breaking point heaping more pressure on us.

This year has also brought yet another round of reform. The Government’s announcement of new Neighbourhood Health Services as part of the latest 10-year NHS plan for England (with similar reforms underway in Scotland, Wales and NI) may bring greater recognition of the central role of primary care and, much more importantly, the investment required to actually deliver it. But for many GPs the news will have prompted a wry smile and an eye roll. After all, haven’t we always been a neighbourhood health service? Haven’t we always been embedded in our communities, delivering care close to home and supporting our local population long before the politicians caught up?

And then there’s the sheer volume of reform itself. Major structural reorganizations seem to come round quicker than CQC inspections, and that’s really saying something! New organizations appear, old ones vanish and somewhere in a dusty corner of a drab building on a roundabout in your town there’s probably still a whiteboard flowchart mapping LHAs, PCTs, CCGs, PCNs, ICBs and every other acronym that has come and gone. Through it all the noise keeps humming along in the background, persistent and annoying as tinnitus, but the work inside the consulting room remains reassuringly constant.

Every day, GPs and their teams block out and ‘mask’ that tinnitus and continue to deliver extraordinary commitment, compassion and professionalism. Your room may be the same, and the pressures outside may feel greater than ever, but within those 10 minutes something quietly remarkable happens. A patient arrives anxious, distressed, or unsure. You listen. You examine. You explain. You reassure. You diagnose and you treat. Most importantly, you help them feel heard and understood.

Even on the days when it feels like you’re barely treading water, you will almost certainly have made a difference to someone’s life. Even on the days when nothing seems to make sense - when symptoms don’t match, the story keeps changing or the problems feel impossible to solve - you still make a difference. Perhaps you eased a worry. Helped a parent feel more confident. Spotted something early that could easily have been missed. Responded sensitively to a disclosure of domestic abuse. These actions are never small, you make them multiple times every day, and your patients notice them.

The 2025 GP Patient Survey found that 90% of patients who had a consultation felt their GP listened to them, and 89% trusted the clinician they saw. These are incredible ratings of trust in you. Despite the tabloid headlines and political focus on access, patients continue to report overwhelmingly positive experiences of the care you provide. Continuity, so often under threat (and to be passionately defended!) also remains deeply valued by patients.

After 30 years as a GP, what strikes me most is how all the external turbulence never changes the essence of our work. Patients still come with the same fears, hopes and uncertainties now as they did decades ago. The young adult terrified their headache is a brain tumour. The frail older person worried about another fall and losing their independence. The parent anxious about their child’s fever. The stories may differ, but the core of the job remains exactly the same: one consultation, one conversation, one patient at a time.

From all of us at NB Medical, thank you for being with us this year through all the reforms, the headlines, the acronym soup and everything else thrown at primary care. It is a privilege to work alongside you in the wonderfully complex, demanding and at times crazy world of general practice. We hope you and your families find some genuine downtime over the holidays: a chance to rest, recharge and maybe even have a whole a cup of tea without being interrupted! And if you can find the time to pause and reflect, we hope you’ll acknowledge the extraordinary difference you make every single day, one patient at a time. 

We look forward to continuing the journey with you in 2026, and we’ll be there to support you all the way!

Have a great festive season, and a very Happy New Year!