Policy and profession: elite perspectives on redefining general practice in Australia and England

To understand how general (family) practice is being redefined and is redefining itself, from the perspective of policy elites, and to build an analytical framework.

Politicians, senior bureaucrats and executives of professional organisations were interviewed (1998-2000) about the impact of general practice reforms on the profession. The information gathered was thematically coded and used to advance an understanding of profession from an elite perspective.

Four main aspects of profession were discussed by interviewees. These were cultural authority, profession's authority, social authority and professional autonomy. The elites interviewed reported a potential challenge to the cultural authority of general practice in both countries through moves to redefine it as something broader. The profession's authority was seen as having shifted, especially in Australia where new forms of representation for the profession have been established. Medicine was viewed variously as having its social authority challenged, maintained, or extended in the granting of expertise in health, and professional autonomy was regarded as having been restructured through policy change.

Policy elites perceive that the authority and autonomy of general practitioners has changed but reform has not resulted in generalised losses for the profession. The framework developed here, which employed aspects of profession that arose as major themes, proved useful for examining the redefinition of profession and for generating policy insights in regard to possibilities for change and likely impacts.