Denmark 2018

The Nordic Leader Seminar took place in Denmark on 23-25 August 2018:

The present and future role and identity of the GP in the Nordic countries

The Nordic countries have organized a primary care with common values, based on person orientation and not disease, free and equal access, gate-keeping and being coordinating and an integrated part of the whole health system. But all the time there is a tendency in our societies that threatens to change or diminish the effect of this organization.

“Good relationship with a freely chosen primary-care doctor, preferably over several years, is associated with better care, more appropriate care, better health and much lower health costs”.
                                                                                                                         (Barbara Starfield)

In our Nordic countries, GPs are challenged by increasing workload, burnout, escape from the profession, lack of younger colleagues; catched up in demands, rules, expectations from many sides and ourselves.

In the society, civil services in the states, there are expectation that GP should attend closer and be a direct part of the secondary healthcare system. GP should institutionalize from being small local bounded and relational valued units towards the more biomedical, patoanatomical and industrialized hospital organization with harmonized algorithms for diagnosing and treatment, where the patient is an object “a transport medium carrying the disease”.

The different set in values between GP and the state is a challenge, and a battle is going on; the fight is about organization and resources.
The different sights in health and human nature from an economic/administrative sight versus a combined humanistic and biomedical leads us to confrontation in the question of: