ABSTRACT
Primary care is generally understood to be the set of health-care activities that take place at the first point of entry to a larger health care system that typically includes secondary (hospitals) and tertiary (specialist) levels. As geographers, we can read the phrase take place not only in the conversational sense of occurring, but also more literally as occupying a place – in a system or hierarchy as well as located in specific sites. The general practitioner (GP; also known in some countries as family physician) is the gateway to wider health services for the majority of people in the United Kingdom and those countries coming under its historical influence and is also the cornerstone of primary care practice (Phillips, 1979).
