## Step 2 - Reading

Doctors
You are going to read a text about GP’s.
Je gaat een tekst lezen over huisartsen.

- Work together with three or four classmates and do exercise 1.
  Werk samen met drie of vier klasgenoten en doe oefening 1.
- Read the text and do exercise 2 by yourself.
  Lees de tekst en doe oefening 2 alleen.

General Practitioners When people are ill with a non-life-threatening condition, they will most often see a General Practitioner, a GP for short. They are sometimes also called Family Doctors. These doctors generally work in the local community in surgeries rather than in hospitals. This makes it easier for people to go to a GP when they need to. However, some GPs work in other areas, such as in hospitals, in schools and for insurance companies. As the name suggests, GPs are doctors that do not have a specialty, such as a brain surgeon or cancer specialist: they are able to diagnose all the possible diseases and problems that one of their patients might have. They can treat and manage most illnesses and perform some minor surgeries in their practice. If a patient is seriously ill or the GP cannot treat the illness, the doctor will refer the patient to a specialist that works in a hospital. If you are ill and need to see a GP you normally need to make an appointment. Sometimes you can just walk into the surgery and see a doctor, but that is not very likely. GPs are usually very busy. Often you have to wait several hours, or even a few days, before you can get an appointment with a GP. If you are too ill to wait you have to go to a hospital and visit the emergency room. GPs also make house-calls. A house-call is when a GP comes to your house to treat or to see a patient. Most often a GP makes house-calls to see elderly people who cannot get to the surgery easily. In some cases, the doctor visits the patient to give them medicine. In other cases, the GP just wants to check on them and make sure they are ok. If you are ill, the doctor will probably prescribe you some medicine. He or she will tell you to come back if you have not started to get better in a few days. GPs often also explain how you can have a better lifestyle that could prevent you from becoming ill in the first place. They recommend people to stop smoking, not to drink too much alcohol and to get enough exercise. If the GP has prescribed you medicine, you need to go to a pharmacy with your prescription to get the medicine.