Mollie McBride on GPs in deprived areas

Mollie McBride was elected as the first woman to be secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 1989. A year later, at the age of 59, she moved from Chester to Beckton, in the East End of London.

Here I was in a practice in the East End completely out of my depth. I mean the first patient was a family of Ethiopians. for example. to register – mother, father, baby and two little boys – no history at all, we couldn’t find the date of birth. The baby – twelve weeks – had had two injections, when were they? Had the mother had that? The three and five-year-old little boys were going round wrecking the surgery and I didn’t know what language to tell them to stop it, you know. And I just felt completely out of my depth. I knew from the College that we make a diagnosis just on the history in 85% of cases – I couldn’t get a history here. How many mistakes – I mean I had three complaints in the first twelve months after one in thirty years! And I realised that, I used to go – I was mesmerised, I’d go from the East End of London and drive to Princes Gate [where the College was then based] and the disparity between – how dare we talk in Princes Gate about how good general practice was when our brothers out in the East End were having such a bad time? A lot of London was super general practice, but here there were in the deprived thing and added on to that all the problems with no premises, no staff, no support.