A Qualitative Study of the Professional Relationship between Family Physicians and Hospital Specialists

The professional relationships between family physicians (general practitioners or GPs) and specialist doctors are crucial in a referral-based national health service such as that in the United Kingdom. They may, for example, have a fundamental influence on what in the past have been assumed to be logical or proximity-based utilisation patterns of secondary and even tertiary hospital facilities if GPs refer to specialists with whom they have …