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Dr John Dunn graduated from Glasgow medical school in 1985 and did his GP training in Exeter before working for in Australia and New Zealand. He settled in Edinburgh, at Muirhouse Medical Practice in 1992 and remains a partner there today. He is actively involved in the teaching of medical students, foundation doctors and GP trainees and continues to be enthusiastic about general practice.

I trained in General Practice in Exeter and the GP at the time who was involved in that programme was a man who had been involved in GP training almost from its inception and that gave me a real enthusiasm for being involved in teaching and training. When my wife and I were in New Zealand and Australia, we did a lot of rural practice and that was interesting and enjoyable at the time but it concentrated our minds in the fact that we didn’t think that rural practice would be right for us.

I liked the idea of being in a bigger practice. So, when we came back to the UK in 1992, I was looking for a bigger practice, a training practice and a practice in a city.  So, I looked at Muirhouse Medical Group in Edinburgh at the recommendation of a friend and found it had a commitment to team-working and ongoing education and professional development, a good building and facilities and good information systems. I think those four pillars are very important in forming a solid base for a practice to be able to flourish and that’s still the situation in the practice now.

I work in an inner city practice with 7 partners and 5 other salaried doctors and we have a list size of 13,500 patients, one of the biggest in Edinburgh. It’s on the North West side of Edinburgh in a housing estate that was built in the 50s and 60s. The housing stock and local facilities have gradually improved but it would still be a disadvantaged practice. We are a practice that has a long tradition of being committed to education: we are involved in educating 2^nd year medical students, 5^th year medical students, foundation doctors and GP trainees.

For many years, we have also had an ongoing commitment to research in General Practice. It tends to be in areas relating to deprivation, in particular HIV infection in the 90s and other blood borne viruses more recently as well as other issues affecting deprived practices.

In our practice, we encourage the partners to do a variety of other things. One of the partners is involved in GP politics, one does research, two other partners are involved as GP trainers, one of the partners has a specialist interest in diabetes and I am very much involved in education. Some of the issues and challenges we currently face are the constant change, the increasing complexity, aging population, increasing expectations, all on a background of societal change.

That makes the job tough, and the resource we need more of is time. It’s a job that’s indifferent to how you’re feeling on the day you’re doing it - we deal with waves of human apprehension and sadness in ten minutes gaps and see lives that are messy and imperfect which is tough. But in a way, that’s one of the biggest privileges of the job - you see so many people behaving with such extraordinary dignity and bravery in the face of the most awful circumstances.

In my case, I have come across quite a few elderly people who as they become frailer and frailer, their spirit seems to get stronger and stronger to allow them to cope with that frailty but to continue to manage and flourish in their lives and that is truly inspiring. There is a paradox there - people talk about retiring and winding down, but I think that possibly when you get older, you need to become increasingly committed and wind up.

I think it’s an enormous privilege to be a GP. I feel proud of the work we do in our practice, I think that we make an enormous difference to people’s lives and it’s often difficult to measure but it’s a job that makes me feel proud, I’m proud to be a GP. It’s a job that brings great fulfillment because you’re behaving in a way that’s consistent with your values; you’re doing something that’s worthwhile so it gives meaning, purpose, structure and direction to your life. It’s a job that gives me great hope, you know – every day I go in thinking I hope I might be able to do something to help at least somebody today and most times I am.

I think, on the whole, my patients value what I’m trying to do and in my experience and in my observations of other people’s views of their GPs on the whole, we’re valued. In essence, you’ve got a job that pays well, that allows you to behave in a way that’s consistent with your values, that allows you to feel a certain sense of pride and fulfillment that can give you a feeling of hope and of being valued and I think most people would cut their arms off for that job. So I think that it’s a wonderful job to have.

In our practice, we encourage the partners to do other things, so one of the partners is involved in GP politics, one is very much involved in education, one does research, I’m involved in education, two other partners are involved as GP trainers, one of the partners has a specialist interest in diabetes so there is a variety of different things you can do if you’re a partner in our practice. I really enjoy being involved in teaching: I’m involved in teaching 2^nd year medical students, 5^th year medical students, foundation doctors and GP registrars. I enjoy the professional fellowship that you get from engaging with people who are training in medicine - that social interaction and the buzz of getting to know students and to know what they’re doing. You are constantly learning from them as well.