Getting to see your GP is hard. Very hard. Actually, scratch that. Getting to see any GP is hard. Actually, scratch that again. Getting through to the surgery reception is a feat involving superhuman levels of cunning and stamina. Having made your way up from 37th in the telephone queue, can you face the crushing defeat of being asked to fill in an online consultation form only to discover that the drop-down box doesn’t have an option for your ailment? Research released at the end of last year indicated that only two per cent of GP practices were seeing all their patients within two weeks. Hardly surprising that when people can’t get hold of a professional to discuss their worries with, they take matters into their own hands and seek advice elsewhere. Where once upon a time this health advice might have been sought from Granny, these days the internet – and in particular – has stepped into the breach. The trouble, of course, is that, as The Mail on Sunday’s GP Ellie Cannon puts it, ‘It’s like the wild west out there.’ The health and wellbeing advice online is often nonsense, perpetuated by a growing ‘wellness’ industry (now worth around £20 billion a year), while some of it is downright harmful.
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