After four decades, Barnard Castle GP bids farewell to staff and patients

THE senior partner at Barnard Castle’s GP surgery has retired after caring for patients for almost four decades.
Dr John White, 65, moved to the town from Tyneside in August 1979 to join Drs Pickworth, Cherry, Melrose, Dry and Ross as an additional partner when the practice was based on the site of what is now the Richardson Hospital.
Dr White studied at Newcastle University, working in hospitals in the city before undergoing his GP training on Tyneside.
“When I joined Barnard Castle, unbelievably, there were no female doctors,” he said. “It was very much a male dominated profession. We were not seeing the numbers of female graduates coming through the universities as there are now.”
During his career he said he had witnessed much change.
“The biggest was in 2004 when the GP contract came in. That meant we no longer had to do nights and weekends on call,” he said. “It was a disaster for the country but in many ways made life more tolerable for us,” he said.
Dr White said many of the memories from his career are from the days of nights and weekend emergencies.
“I would be going into people’s homes, seeing patients at that time and not knowing what to expect – and quite often getting a shock.”
He added: “Things have changed. One of the big things for me is there is more pressure.
“On a Friday afternoon in practice in the later 1970s you would stop about 4pm. Now you are here to 7pm. There is increased demand but there are more conditions you can treat today. One of the greatest things is the investigations we can do with CT scans and MRI scans. We did not have those. And cancer is eminently treatable now, whereas in the past it wasn’t.”
Dr White continued: “Unfortunately, the downside is that a lot of people are working part time instead of full time, so continuation of care suffers. Instead of having a named doctor, you don’t see them again and several people look after one condition.”
Dr White is married to retired doctor Jenny and two of their  children have followed in their footsteps.
Son Robert is a GP in Whitstable, Kent, while daughter Alice is a palliative care doctor in Poole, Dorset. Youngest son Jack is a maths tutor at Barnard Castle School who will soon relocate to Malaysia where he will take up a teaching post.
“I would not change my life,” said Dr White. “I still think it’s a great profession. It dismays me there are not enough people coming through. For the job advertisement when I was retiring we only had two applicants.”