Is the foot-soldier, the frontline man in medicine.10I may sound silly, but just what is a general practitioner? HeHe deals with the patient when he first falls ill – theman at grassroot level. At this stage, he treats the patient5 where he is competent to treat, or else channels him to theright specialist if he feels that specialist attention is needed, 2or if he feels incompetent to deal with the problem. In theold days, the GP was also a family friend, counsellor andeven mentor.Medical students are taught the subjects of internalmedicine, paediatrics, general surgery, orthopaedic surgery,obstetrics and gynaecology, ophthalmology, car, nose andthroat surgery, dermatology and infectious diseases, pre-ventive medicine and public health, amongst others, to a15 functional degree of competence. They also learn forensicmedicine and pathology: the former interests the GP less;the latter is mainly concerned with diagnosis, as is bio-chemistry. So a student has, theoretically, very wide scopeif he decides to go on his own in general practice.After graduation, he has to do six months of surgeryand six months of internal medicine (or their equivalent inother posting) before he can fully registered to practice medicine independent. conclusion ​