The chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) said doctors should be concerned about a trend towards replacing the therapeutic relationship with a transactional approach to patient care.
Professor Martin Marshall was making his opening address at the start of RCGP's two day conference, 'A Fresh Approach to General Practice'.
GPs, he said, were being praised by the media and politicians for their "heroic" efforts during the pandemic.
"The way in which you have rallied to the vaccination challenge has been incredible, especially when in tandem you’ve been keeping high priority normal GP services up and running and delivering the biggest-ever flu vaccine programme."
He said: "Remarkably, over 75% of the 13 million plus vaccines administered so far in the UK have been delivered by general practice."
Remote Consultations
The praise for GPs and their teams was "slightly unnerving", he added, "particularly so after last summer's 'open season' when we were criticised for changing our model of delivering care in order to keep our patients safe".
That shift to remote consultations, by phone or video, underlined a trend towards the "dilution or loss of the relational element of general practice", Prof Marshall argued.
"The established literature tells us that telephone consultations tend to be shorter, cover fewer problems, are characterised by less data gathering, less advice, less rapport building, and are perceived to be less safe than face-to-face ones," he said.
Prof Marshall rejected calls by the Health Secretary Matt Hancock for an increase in video consultations by medical professionals.
"As a College we don’t agree," Prof Marshall said. "We don't want to turn the clock back; we know that remote consultations have a role to play in the emerging general practice landscape – some patients prefer them, and so do some GPs.
"But, if there's one thing I've learnt during the course of the pandemic, it's that it's much harder to build a relationship with a patient, to establish trust and empathy, through a remote consultation.
"And without that personal connection, without knowing the person behind the symptoms, it's harder for GPs to do our jobs.
"The relationship between a patient and their GP is as important as a scalpel is to a surgeon," he told the conference. "If relationships were a drug, NICE and other guideline developers would have to mandate their use."
