if you wish to observe usually writes Prof Pierce A Grace in regards to the rise of Irish normal observe
Irish Normal Observe – The Lengthy Story
Michael V. Hanna
ICGP and A.A. Farmar, Dublin, 2024, 304 pages.
Even although a lot of my Seventies classmates would commit their lives to the self-discipline, the one form of physician we by no means noticed in our undergraduate coaching was the overall practitioner; we had no lectures from GPs, and we by no means visited a GP’s surgical procedure. Based on Michael V. Hanna in Irish Normal Observe – The Lengthy Story, when John Fleetwood was invited to provide a single lecture to the ultimate yr medical college students in UCD within the early Fifties, the Dean selected to introduce him as a lecturer in geriatrics: ‘it will provide you with extra standing than as a GP’.
Again then GPs ran single-handed, remoted practices usually in competitors with one another; till 1971 many had been dispensary medical doctors. They often lived over the store, had been accessible in any respect hours and steadily visited sufferers at house in all weathers. Fifty years on all has modified. A lot medical pupil schooling now takes place in multi-practitioner normal practices or main care centres the place the scholars are immersed within the observe group and study a substantial amount of their drugs by doing in addition to observing.
Prof Pierce Grace
Tutorial departments of normal observe maintain their very own with the extra conventional departments in medical faculties, and an Irish School of Normal Observe (ICGP) has statutory accountability for postgraduate vocational coaching, persevering with medical schooling (CME) {and professional} growth typically observe.
Commissioned by the ICGP to have fun its first forty years, Irish Normal Observe is in two elements. Half One presents a story historical past of the evolution of Irish drugs and society from the Gaelic physicians of late medieval Eire via the emergence of the medical professions within the lengthy eighteenth century, the evolution of dispensaries within the nineteenth, and the ideological battles between church and state over medical care within the twentieth.
Reflecting Michael Hanna’s experience in native and institutional historical past, the narrative is interspersed with fascinating ‘case research’ reflecting the experiences of a number of outstanding people and establishments during the last 4 hundred years. For instance, Dr Mary J Farrell (1892-1973) MD, MAO, Dip Public Well being, who graduated from UCD in 1916, had handled British First World Battle casualties and victims of the 1918/19 influenza epidemic in England earlier than travelling to work in West Africa within the Twenties.
In 1930 she was appointed dispensary physician to Longford city. There, one evening, she delivered a Traveller lady of a wholesome child boy in a subject below a canvas shelter by the sunshine of an oil lamp held by the lady’s husband. Other than treating her many sufferers – within the dispensary and wherever they occurred to dwell – she was required to maintain a number of registers, report month-to-month to the Board of Well being and Help, vaccinate her dispensary sufferers and, as Medical Officer for Well being, perform sanitary inspections which regularly resulted in litigation and attendance in courtroom.
Cherished by all, she retired in 1963 and died in 1973. She is remembered by a plaque in her native Longford and a pupil medal in UCD. The world of the apothecary and the dispensary physician was full of comparable tales.
Half Two is dedicated to the historical past of the ICGP. Within the enamel of opposition from the established Royal Faculties, a School of Normal Practitioners (CGP) was launched within the UK in 1952; it turned the RCGP in 1967. In 1953 an Irish college of the CGP was established and over the subsequent ten years three extra Irish colleges adopted.
In 1975 the Irish Institute of Normal Observe was based, its remit to supervise vocational coaching of GPs, help CME and encourage analysis typically observe. It was a brief hop from there to establishing the ICGP in 1984. Since then, the ICGP has developed its membership examination (MICGP), launched a really profitable journal, Discussion board, developed a nationwide community of colleges to help postgraduate schooling, collaborated with the schools in creating departments and chairs of normal observe, and established a purpose-built headquarters in Lincoln Place in Dublin.
It is a handsomely produced guide with glorious footnotes, bibliography and appendices. The chapters are quick, informative and simply learn. Every a part of the guide accommodates a collection of gorgeous, colored illustrations together with, in Half One a web page from the fifteenth century E-book of the O’Lees, and a number of other images from the excellent 2012 TCD tercentenary exhibition illustrating the day-to-day work of normal practitioners in Half Two.
This guide brings to life the story, previous and current, of normal observe in Eire and is an excellent tribute to the ICGP and a celebration of the women and men who take care of most of us more often than not. This guide is an effective learn and can be of curiosity to Irish medical practitioners of all types. 
Creator
Prof Pierce A. Grace is Adjunct Professor of Surgical Science, Graduate Entry Medical College, College of Limerick.
