Interview
“It was a good medical
community to work
in. I did have a lot of
responsibility for my
grade, but we were
very well supported,
and that made a big
difference”
and so effectively leapt on the property
ladder while he was still at Uni!
After selling that property, it gave him
the means to invest in a small house in
Ryde as his first independent home on the
Island.
Working GP
After a hectic three years as a trainee, Dr
Coleman gained his GP Certificate and
headed to the south side of the Island as
assistant to Dr Norman Beisly in Ventnor.
After little more than a year, Dr Beisly
retired, meaning that at the age of 30, Dr
Coleman became a partner in the practice
with the late Dr Alan Champion and Dr
David Turner.
“It was very much about working in the
community, and seeing whole families, so
you built up strong relationships of trust
with people over time, and really got to
know people” he recalls.
“It’s satisfying to feel that you are helping
families throughout their lives, and now,
after more than 30 years, I must have seen
four or more generations of the same
family.
“For a GP that’s a great basis to work
from, because you really get to know
people and their history, which makes it
easier to pick up on things they say or do
that might be subtly different and may
need your attention.
“Unfortunately it’s hard to measure
any of these things in the way the
Government would like us to measure
them – it just comes from experience and
knowledge of your patients.”
“Of course we have had to modernise
and embrace all the modern methods, but
we still do it here in a family-focused way.”
But as he points out, the pressures in
the NHS now are steering things towards
ever- larger medical practices.
“The general idea is that large is good”
he says, “but you can lose the real
effectiveness of a family GP if there’s
no continuity or relationship with the
practice.
With its roll of just over 5,200 patients,
Ventnor would now count as a small
medical practice - the average being
over 12,000, and in the case of inner city
practices, more like 30,000.
The biggest change Dr Coleman says
he’s witnessed during his years as a GP is
the “intensity and depth” of the conditions
that family doctors now routinely treat.
“What I see in the surgery now is as
specalised as I used to see in outpatients
during my hospital training” he explains.
“There’s a lot more responsibility on the
GP in managing chronic conditions, such
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