Charles Rees
During lock-down over a year ago I started writing a book. It started from the anecdotes about my patients which had been in my head for years intertwined with the changes in Family Doctoring which I had experienced. I called it the Life and Decline of the Family Doctor and this is what I wrote about it and put on the cover.
This book comes from my experiences as a family doctor in a small town in Dorset England for 38 years covering 1972 to 2010. During most of that time being a Family Doctor was more than being a General Practitioner. I have tried to explain the changes that occurred without trying to extol the virtues of a golden age which never existed. The process of computerisation, advances in medicine, change in the family, de-skilling of the doctor, training of GPs and the rise of the ‘portfolio’ doctor are covered hopefully without over-doing it. I hope I have explained how doctor and patient became distanced and why. All through this period the control by Government extended. The Doctor now works for the Government and not the patient.
Since I retired from the Practice 10 years ago the concept of a patient having their own Doctor for decades or generations has largely gone. What I have tried to do is to explain the changes and why they happened and to do it through the people I lived along side and cared for. They were sometimes hard work, sometimes irritating, often chaotic and occasionally terribly funny. But in the end they were my patients and I was their Doctor.
Whilst trying to get it published I realised that having been a medical student in the 1960s and a junior doctor in the 1970s there was another tale to be told. I called the first part ‘I was not a good medical student’ and the second part ‘Blunt but Good’
The result was a trilogy starting with a young man having lost his mother at age 11 wanted to make a difference. It plots the course from an 18 year old who had discovered the freedom of being a student away from home, the years at medical school, through the truly hard time of being a junior doctor in the 1970s to being a successful Family Doctor and GP Trainer. After 48 years of work and at least 300,000 patients (seen face to face!) later it was mission accomplished.
The final book is called Mission Accomplished and is available by googling Amazon or Author House Bookstore and searching for Charles Rees or Mission Accomplished. There are 247 pages of pithy, easy to read dialogue which may jog your own memories of the past and certainly some things you never knew about East Dorset!
The comments from my old medical student friends has been gratifying but this is my favourite: It was a most enjoyable read, in fact quite a page turner. You write well in a conversational style, almost like being entertained over a pint in a pub. There was nothing I found uninteresting, and many stories were fascinating, which merely confirms the notion that the colour of Medicine is not so much in the illnesses that come your way, as the surprising situations in which they do and the impact they have. I enjoyed it so much, I read it twice.(Retired senior anaesthetist Leeds General Infirmary.)
About the author
Charles Rees is a retired GP who spent 38 years in one East Dorset Practice and worked as a doctor in the NHS for 48 years. He was involved in Training GPs for over 30 years. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of GPs in 2006.
My wife , Dot has read Charles’ book for a little relaxation whilst undergoing dialysis and the read didn’t cause her a setback. In fact she found it quite enlightening and amusing and she still seems to be improving as far as the dialysis is concerned indicating that the book is a good read.