Confessions of a doctor.

A programme which takes a rerospective and candid look at doctors in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s with lots of archive footage from a range of sources. The first topic looks at relationships between doctors and nurses; one doctor discusses an abortion (which at the time was illegal unless there was a medical reason) which he arranged for a girlfriend who he had made pregnant (later in the programme he has a change of heart regarding offering terminations to his own patients). General practice was available to those who fitted in socially; one man of Indian heritage describes how his performance at a cricket match hastened his appointment as a GP. The doctors describe how much trust there was in their profession at the time. One GP describes how he gave a terminally ill patient morphine at the end of of their life which presented a moral dilemma; this may have hastened his death. Some of the amusing (and patronising) acronyms noted on patient records are described. Doctors reminisce about the trust their patients and society placed upon them. The Family Planning Association opened offering birth control to women; one female GP dispensed family planning in Glasgow. She appeared in a television documentary in the early 1970s. In 1974 the contraceptive pill was made freely available to all. A BBC Programme called 'Doctor's Dilemmas' made in 1985 put their decision making under the microscope - often unfavourably (the dilemma was prescribing the pill to a 16 year old girl). One GP's decision to administer morphine to a terminally ill man led to him being charged with murder and later cleared (he was however struck off). In 2000, Harold Shipman, seen in 1982 talking about mentally ill patients, was later found guilty of hastening the death of 265 patients by administering overdoses of morphine. He committed suicide in 2004. Thereafter, the power of GPs have declined. GPs don't carry morphine any longer; there are no more nights on call. Some of the many changes are identified.