If you look through the archives, I do occasionally tell people about the good GPs I meet. The ones who stick around in the Nursing homes waiting for the ambulance to turn up. The ones that hang around the sick patient's home to make sure they are alright before the ambulance comes. To be fair to GPs, I don't know them all (and the better ones are less likely to call us out for inconsequential causes), but... Sometimes it does seem that there are a lot more GPs out there who will get ?MIs sitting out in the waiting room (or outside the surgery having a ciggie), neglect to gove their patient's oxygen or think that 75mg of asprin is the right dose for ACS. At no point do I say that this is a reasonable sample - but I do meet a lot of crap out there. (And yes, there is crap in a lot of things, but I think us ambo people have more regular supervison/training, so any bad habits/lack of knowledge tend to get picked up fairly quickly). Yes, they are expected to be experts in everything, but for two things, 1) they can refer patients with 'wacky' stuff to the specialities in the hospitals, and 2) When I was district nursing I knew all about the social services - there ain't that many... This particular GP didn't make a mistake, instead I think they had a failure of common sense... A potentially serious one as well.