New Year’s Blog – General Practice Word of the Year 2024

Congratulations! If you are reading this blog you have made it through 2024 and come out the other side. 

This is the year general practice showed some backbone, the year the new health secretary declared the CQC ‘not fit for purpose’ and the General Medical Council was criticised for becoming too general.

But instead of reliving the bad, let’s think about the good! New Year’s is a time for reflection. Looking for ideas? Why not start with the most fundamental part of our profession, a sacred tenet: communication. 

Words are a central component here but language has a life, it evolves over time, and with the most popular words of 2024 I’m beginning to think that I’m increasingly out of touch with the population we care for. I’ll give you three examples:

• “Brat” - the Collins dictionary choice for Word of the Year. A word clearly designed to describe those children that destroy your consulting room while their parents ignore the sounds of breaking medical equipment. Apparently now it has an entirely different and quite contrary meaning. 
• “Manifest” – from the Cambridge dictionary – a word which used to describe how symptoms appear in a patient, e.g. my piles manifest after too much sitting in my consulting chair, but is now used to indicate ambition, as if my piles needed more encouragement. 
• “Brain rot” - the Oxford dictionary’s choice, perhaps indicating their staff should get themselves checked by their GP as it is clearly two words and not one. 

But what would be the Word of Year 2024 for General Practice? 

Of course there’s the obvious: “amazing”, “strong”, “dynamic”, “foundational”. But these are true every year, so what specifically about 2024? 

In the absence of ideas I did what all creatives now do – ask AI. It came up with “crisis”, “reform”, “resilience”. Hmmm, nothing new or original there either then… Given how pervasive AI is becoming in day-to-day life and no doubt will soon be in practices as well, AI could arguably be our word of the year, although personally I prefer “hallucination”.

In the context of AI this means incorrect or misleading results that it simply makes up – one of the key reasons GPs are not (yet) out of the job, although we may soon be re-branded as ‘AI-results interpreters’ (“I know Google said it might be encephalitis but it is just a headache. How can I be sure? Well, firstly, you’ve made it in to show me your phone’s search history and, secondly, it tells us you were looking for kebab houses at 3am last night…”

Of course it means something totally different in the medical setting. Hallucinations are the perception of something that does not exist outside of one’s mind, such as the sense of finishing your working day having seen your last patient, when in fact you still have one to three hours of admin. 

I think there may be a better word: “hope”. After years of doom and gloom we go in to 2025 with signs that change is on the horizon, driven by and for general practice. Let’s hope it’s not just a hallucination. 

Thanks for joining us in 2024. Have a happy New Year everyone – see you in 2025!