What Is a Doctor?: A GP’s Prescription for the Future

What Is a Doctor? is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate about how we maintain an NHS that is both fit for purpose and free. Using stories and case studies from across his thirty-year career as a GP, Phil Whitaker offers insight into the medical movements, political interference and societal changes that have transformed the role of doctor over the past three decades.Much has altered for the better but, even when based on good intentions, an equal or greater amount has been damaging and threatens the sustainability of the NHS. In examining what it means to be a doctor today this book also answers an accompanying question ‘what is a patient?’ – and how we can all take a more active role in our healthcare. And looking forward Dr Whitaker describes what might yet be done to restore the NHS and its capacity for properly patient-centred care.

Dr Phil Whitaker is a practising GP and has been so for over thirty years. He is the author of several books and the winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Betty Trask Award and the RSL Encore Award. He is the medical editor of the New Statesman. He lives in Wiltshire.@pwhitakerwriter | philwhitaker.co.uk