In 1982, the Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners published Ivan Illich’s article ‘Medicalization in Primary Care’.1 Illich held a paradoxical belief that GPs could contribute to the healthy process of demedicalisation, that is: ‘... to offer their patients the occasion to de-medicalize their own attitude to pain, disability, discomfort, ageing, birth and death.’ 1In other words, ‘unhooking [patients] from the health system’ .1 This article presents WONCA’s definition of Quaternary Prevention (P4) as a unifying framework that organises GPs’ scope on demedicalisation.2Devised in 1986 by Marc Jamoulle, a Belgian GP, P4 is: ‘... an action taken to identify a patient at risk of over-medicalization, to protect him from new medical invasion, and to suggest to him interventions which are ethically acceptable.’ 3P4 was initially oriented to those patients who were feeling …
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