Asylum seekers with complex needs: an enhanced role for primary care specialists?

Last November I reached the first anniversary of my volunteer/honorary primary care contract that is specifically intended to help asylum seekers with complex needs. It has more than worked for me and as the months have gone by I have increasingly thought that it is an idea worth passing on. It is clear that the NHS will never, ever fund this group of patients/clients adequately. Yet asylum seekers are human beings, just like the rest of us. The obvious differences relate to the effects of their experiences. This is the very stuff of primary care — to be an advocate, to try to make sense of an undifferentiated mass of needs, to come up with a plan, and to have the freedom to follow it up. Nowadays, who in mainstream medicine really has the time to do this? So, hello and welcome to all those GPs approaching retirement, who used to love the job, are financially secure, and looking round for things to do! I loved my job — the team is fantastic, the workload was manageable, and the patients intensely rewarding to treat. It has involved learning completely new skills as well as maintaining the old. My new expertise includes, among many others, such features …