A FORMER Gwent GP has used 40 years of experience to write a book about the NHS and how the service treats and cares for patients against a background of often conflicting pressures.

Dr Elen Samuels spent more than three-quarters of her career seeing patients daily as a GP in Monmouthshire.

She says she wrote the book - A Sceptical GP - to try to explain how the needs of the patients are met within a framework of finite resources, government rules, and raised expectations.

Gwent Valleys-born, Dr Samuels studied and qualified at Cambridge, returning to South Wales in the early 1970s. Her career as a GP was bookended by hospital work, and Local Health Board (LHB) management posts.

"A big reason why I wrote the book is to try to get the general public to understand that more is not necessarily better," she said.

"Healthcare can and should predominantly be very local and simple."

The NHS in Wales wants to focus more healthcare in the primary care sector, through GP practices and more localised clinics, which Dr Samuels said requires "pump-priming, so in the short term it always costs money."

"This has been talked about for years and has rarely happened, except when (Neville) Wanless (a former banking chief who drafted proposals to end health inequality in Wales) gave Torfaen LHB and others money to do that," she said.

The growing expectations of patients is another challenge the NHS must meet, and Dr Samules addresses this and many other issues in her book.

A Sceptical GP, distributed by the Welsh Book Council, is available at bookshops, priced £11.99, or by e-mailing macfieh2mac-rhea.co.uk