How to Become a GP in the UK

The UK is always in need of fresh-faced general practitioners (GPs), and you could be the one to answer that call. If you have a passion for healthcare and you’re willing to play your part in tending to the nation’s everyday health problems, you should consider making this your career goal.

Should you decide that you wish to become a UK-based GP, you’re going to have to undergo a lot of training and spend a lot of time honing your craft as a doctor.

To find out what you must do specifically to become a GP in the UK, be sure to read on.

What you need to do to become a GP

Before you are legally allowed to operate as a GP in the UK, you must undergo a whole host of different training and educational courses.

First, you’ll need to complete the following higher education courses:

• A 5-year degree in medicine
• A 2-year general training foundation course
• A 3-year general practice specialist course

After all of that, there’s still one more hurdle that you must cross — the MRCGP qualification. This will put all you’ve learned about medicine and general practice to the test. You will be asked to prove your worth when it comes to evidence-based practice, communicating with others, and your patient-centric approach. If you want to complete your GP training in the UK, this is a necessary qualification to attain.

Fortunately, attaining the MRCGP qualification need not take up too much of your time. One of its three core components, the Clinical skills assessment (CSA), can actually be trained for in just 12 hours. If you’re itching to become a fully-fledged GP (which you probably will be at this point!), you should consider enrolling on one of the immersive CSA courses offered by Arora Medical Education.

Know what you’re letting yourself in for

Being a healthcare provider is not for the faint-hearted; there’s no denying that. As a GP, you will provide medical advice and services to people on a daily basis. From the moment you clock in on a morning to the moment you clock out of an evening, you will be inundated with patients. This is because of the simple fact that, in most cases, you will be the only medical professional that people will be able to get in touch with.

It’s important that you know what you’re letting yourself in for before you go ahead and attempt to become a GP. If you don’t, you might find the workload to be quite overwhelming. Here are just a few of the general tasks that you will be expected to perform each day:

• Diagnosing patients
• Giving general medical advice
• Prescribing appropriate medicines
• Recommending certain treatments
• Carrying out minor surgeries and teaching patients how to perform them at home
• Referring patients to hospitals and specialist consultants