There are occasional gems among the rants and raves that comprise the comments sections beneath online articles.

Just the other day, I was so struck by one particular response that I noted it down. It was written by a pharmacist, although I can’t remember which article it referred to, nor even which online journal it appeared in. However, the content is more important than the context.

This is what it said: “It would be nice if for once there could be some degree of acceptance that everyone isn’t doing things for the pure annoyance of GPs...We help you out far more than we hinder you, and, unfortunately, you may well find out just how much we help you when many of us are gone.”

This rang a massive bell. Two, in fact. First, yes, it rang true about GPs’ attitudes. We do tend to be snooty about pharmacists. Many of us have a Pavlovian view that you are doctor-wannabes performing an anachronistic and redundant role whose credibility is undermined by your insistence on selling, say, copper bracelets. 

But it resonated in a second way. It reminded me of the attitude medical specialists have towards GPs. Traditionally, family doctors have been viewed as failed specialists by those who don’t really understand their role, an image which tends to be reinforced during hospital-skewed training.

Despite this being a Jurassic mind-set, it still rankles – to the extent that GPs continue to push for ‘official’ recognition of general practice as a speciality, and the Royal College of General Practice has called for an end to stigmatising "banter" at medical school which leads to the “systematic denigration” of GPs.

One of our arguments is that specialists only ever see that narrow band of cases – through A&E attendance and outpatient referrals – which is beyond our level of expertise. They don’t realise that we deal with the other 90% of presentations and contacts without bothering them. They can’t see what we don’t send.

And, thanks to the comment-that-rang-a-bell, I now realise that the GP-pharmacist relationship suffers from the same problem. We gripe about which patients come via the pharmacist, but we’re oblivious to what you already keep away from our door.

Which means that, while we GPs are desperately trying to prove we’re just as ‘good’ as specialists, the irony is that we’re just as bad.