The medical faculty of the University of Bristol was slow to accept that general practice has a role in teaching medical students and was the last of the pre-2000 medical schools in the UK to create an academic undergraduate post occupied by a general practitioner. The story behind this development is interesting and illustrates the way that tradition can be challenged and eventually altered.

In the early 1960s, Bristol's professor of public health and medical officer of health, Robert Wofinden, created a name for himself with the development of health centres. He saw this as a way of bringing together general practitioners, nurses, midwives and health visitors to improve the health of patients in various parts of the city. At the same time Michael Lennard, a relatively recent Bristol graduate, was working in general practice in Hartcliffe, a new estate in the south of the city, and was keen to introduce medical students to general practice. In 1963 Sandy Macara (later president of the BMA) was appointed lecturer within the small public health department and given the responsibility for running a four-week general practice clerkship. In 1965 the southwest faculty of the College of General Practitioners sent a memorandum of evidence to the medical curriculum review committee of the university stating ‘we strongly urge the setting up of a department of general practice as a logical step in the development of undergraduate medical education’.