We have a specialist in the family...I won't say which specialism but they've been through several medical degrees but having practised only in their specialism hardly remember any of the rest. Plus they only keep up to date with their own specialism.
A GP has to cover every area of medicine physical and mental and keep themselves up to date and the good ones do that. The best ones are good at listening and have great people skills. The worst ones are arrogant, rude and patronising. Some sort of performance related pay is in order maybe some testing from a 'mystery shopper'. With such good pay some are only in the job for the money they need to be weeded out, in fact as a biology graduate my first year at Uni was full of prospective medical students and the ones without the people skills could easily be picked out at that early stage!
