‘Patients, not customers'. Author Alan Bennett hails 125 years of the James Wigg GP practice
Thursday, 12th July 2012
Mayor Heather Johnson
Dr Mike Modell
Published: 12 July, 2012
by TOM FOOT
ALAN Bennett said he hoped the day would never come when patients “are thought of as customers” in a speech praising a doctors’ practice on its 125th anniversary.
The author said doctors and staff at James Wigg Practice in Kentish Town were “driven by a calling that was both social and therapeutic”.
He paid tribute to the practice’s founding father, Dr James Wigg, who, he said, wrote in the late 1930s about his own “resentment of the dreadful injustices experienced by patients” and that he would “rather choke than vote for the party that sponsored them”.
Mr Bennett said Dr Wigg found “intolerable the carefully nurtured suggestion that only the indolent were victims of the economic battle”, adding: “It is a view that still hangs about when we hear excuses for economies and so-called reforms that are no reforms at all.
And the doctors in the practice today still find themselves battling for the rights of their patients against marketing philosophies that are very little to do with their welfare.
“Although this is a very modern practice, may the day never come where patients are referred to or thought of as customers.
"The word patient means a sufferer and when someone comes to the doctor it is not because they want to buy something it is because they want help.
Doctors are not shopkeepers, patients are not customers and medicine is not for profit.”
He added: “We should be grateful and proud that here at the practice we have such a dedicated crowd of professionals whose ideals are still worthy of its founder, James Wigg.”
Dr Mike Modell, who worked at the practice for 40 years, Labour MP Frank Dobson, Mayor Heather Johnson and Wigg partner Dr Roy MacGregor also spoke.
All paid tribute to Dr John Horder, who devoted much of his life to the practice and was described as the “founding father of modern general practice” after his death last month.
His widow, Elizabeth Horder, who also worked at the practice, sat alongside Mr Bennett.
About 300 people attended the afternoon event, which featured an art exhibition, children’s games and live bands.
Dr MacGregor, who is retiring, said: “We plan as a practice to continue our emphasis on social care despite several pressures and changes of personnel.
"The role of patient groups will be increasingly important as we find our way in the new NHS.”
