The Local Medical Committee provides a completely confidential and free service, offering:

• Listening, coaching and, if required, advice to GPs in situations like yours.
• Keeping you company at hearings.
• If necessary, providing completely separate support for the GP and the practice should the two be at variance.
• Providing mediation, if both parties agree.

To seek help of this or any other sort, please contact the Secretary. You will then be given a choice of 2 or more 'LMC Advocates' who are senior, experienced and empathetic GPs from whom you can choose to receive help. It will then be up to you to contact them. They will bill the LMC for the work they do, but it is completely anonymised and confidential.

We ALSO provide a password-protected website called the Gloucestershire GP Safe House (GPSH) which, as its name implies allows you to go alone into each 'room' to seek for guidance and help. The rooms are:

• Consulting Room - Personal Health Information
• Professional Relationships Bureau - Working Relationship Problems
• Library of Solutions - Non-clinical Aspects of Patient Care
• Career Development Office - Professional Development Contacts for Support and Advice - This is a link to the Gloucestershire LMC Advocate Area which offers the possibility of a personal, completely anonymous, one-to-one, online consultation with a professional advisor as well as more everyday modes of communication!
• The Garden Shed - A place where you can comment or give feedback on using GPSH.

If you have recently started practising in the county do make yourself known to us and we will send you a password.