General practice and professional coordination.

In a satellite city in South Australia, 17 miles from Adelaide, a controlled experiment in which a social worker from a local community agency has been placed in a four-man practice is demonstrating one way in which new forms of professional coordination can evolve out of already existing services. Through daily face-to-face contact, doctors, and social worker, as well as other surgery staff members, are learning ways of cooperating in unravelling the many mixed medical and psychosocial problems that present in a general practice setting. There are indications that community response to the innovation is positive because the doctors develop an assurance in making referrals, and people see the service as an extension of a known service in an already familiar setting.