- Dr Clare Gerada said GPs shouldn’t be responsible for providing diet advice
- She has called on patients to take more ‘responsibility’ for their own health
- Obesity is responsible for one in 14 premature deaths in England and Wales
Victoria Allen Science Correspondent For The Daily Mail
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A senior GP has said it is not up to doctors to tell people about health and fitness.
Dr Clare Gerada, former chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, suggested patients should take responsibility for themselves and search for information on the internet.
Obesity is estimated to cost almost £2.5 billion a year in England and Wales, causing around one in 14 premature deaths.
Dr Clare Gerarda said patients to take responsibility for themselves and Google key health information
Cheltenham Science Festival heard yesterday it is a dangerous as cancer and entirely preventable.
But Dr Gerada claimed it is not up to GPs to keep people healthy through diet and exercise advice.
Asked by an audience member, who said he had been forced to consult the internet for guidance on health and fitness, she asked: ‘Why should your GP tell you that?’
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Asked where he should go for help, she replied: ‘Well, you just said – you go on the internet.’
Dr Gerada, the first female chair of the RCGP, said: ‘The reason I am saying this is that the future has to be all of you taking responsibility.
‘The idea that you need to consult me as the GP to tell you where to go is a nonsense in tomorrow’s world.
‘In yesterday’s patronising world where I had the knowledge and I kept it from you, fine, but you are just as responsible.’
Dr Gerada said GPs were no longer living in ‘yesterday’s patronising world’ where GPs were the only ones with knowledge about obesity
As chair of the RCGP, from 2011 to 2013, Dr Gerada was criticised for rejecting a Government crackdown on health tourism as ‘xenophobic’.
She also denied that AE was facing rising demand.
Yesterday she said people must take control over their own health, adding: ‘If you don’t do that I am afraid that what is going to happen is that you have all the power and no responsibility.
‘We are going to end up with a burnt-out system where there won’t be health professionals because we can’t take that responsibility.’
Obesity is said to cost England and Wales more than £2.5billion a year
Speaking at the science festival, in an event called The Healthcare Revolution, she was supporting a system called eConsult, used by patients to self-check their symptoms online instead of attending a doctor’s appointment person.
It is already used by surgeries across the country and available to nearly three million patients.
Dr Gerada said: ‘What we have to do is to try and stop patients coming into my consulting room. But safely.’
She added: ‘We are now within a year or two years of completely transforming the way healthcare is delivered and the way patients are going to interact with doctors.
Obesity is also responsible for one in fourteen premature deaths
‘The most vital part of my job and the part that makes everything else much easier, which makes my care for patients, irrespective of how I use these machines, is me having a relationship with my patients.’
The audience also heard from Professor Tony Young, the NHS’s national clinical director for innovation, on new technology which can pick up from someone’s voice if they are unwell and a sensor which sounds an alert when people suffering from back pain are slouching.
But he said older people must be helped to help new technology to monitor their own health, adding: ‘We can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach which brings inequality.’
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