Medical generalists: connecting the map and the territory.

BMJ 2005;331:1462-4 Despite enormous advances within medical science over the past 100 years, an under-recognised but inevitable gap remains between the map of medical science and the territory of individual human suffering.' The task of the medical generalist is to make useful corìnections across this constantly recurring gap. A1l doctors carry t¡e medical map, albeit with patchy and varþg levels of detail, but only the medical generalist uses it to try and make sense of the whole human person, transcending all the arbitrary divisions of specialist practice. Here we explore the role of the medical generalist and consider how this might be affected by current NHS reforms.