Study title

These data were collected as part of a four-year Wellcome Trust funded research project tracking the relation between waiting and care in general practice in a moment of overlapping crises for the NHS. A researcher at Birkbeck College set out to observe the forms that waiting could take across all areas of life and work in two Practices: one serving a densely populated urban area in Central East London, the other serving a large rural area in Devon. The transcripts comprise a series of recurring interviews with two general practitioners, and a collection of one-off interviews with other members of the general practice team including reception, managerial and administration workers. All the interviews were carried out between June 2020 and April 2021.Waiting, Staying and Enduring in General Practice was a 4-year research study (2018 – 2022) based on observations and interviews carried out over the course of 1 year in two NHS general practices in England. Its original aim was to study the relationship between care and time during long periods of ‘watchful waiting’ in general practice. The emphasis on achieving clinical outcomes by adhering to tightly controlled timeframes when providing access, advice and treatments was at odds with the temporalities of much of the healthcare falling within its remit (intractable, complicated, long term and medically unexplained health conditions often with no clear ‘outcomes’). Responding to the discrepancy, this research investigated what forms of care could issue from time in general practice in situations in which nothing appeared to improve or get better. Based on interviews with healthcare workers in clinical and non-clinical roles, observations of routine GP appointments, observations of Balint group meetings and personal testimonies of general practitioners made publicly available online, it explored this understudied area of everyday healthcare through a series of ethnographically derived cases. The study formed part of...