Nope! You beat me to it!
The GP does it here; OB/GYN’s are who you get sent to when you have a problem pregnancy or wonky ute. It works well
A wonky ute? Is that a technical term?
Interesting. I can see how it makes practical sense. It would be a culture shock, though. I think I’d find it uncomfortable at first to have all of my medical conversations with the person who does my pelvic exam. I have heard that some women in the US use their OB/GYN as their primary care doctor. That sounds more costly, but I could see it making sense if someone is in serial childbearing mode.
It’s only a problem if you have two utes.
Well, the technical term is uterus voncius. This is just the layperson’s version.
Dumb and dumber: the director of her clinic is backing her up. Home | The National Post Home Page | National Post
Maybe it was a more normal event in the past before we got all specialistic here in the US. When I was in the mood to have my kiddies I interviewed GP’s for the job because I wanted the person who delivered said kiddies to know me as more than a womb. Two kids delivered by different GP’s, no drugs, worked for us. Kids, mom and dad all going to the same person for years works well. Continuity is good.
Heh, my husband and I go to the Dr. together to this day.
Didn’t the film “My Cousin Vinny” feature two utes who were in trouble with the law? I think that’s how their lawyer referred to them…
GP’s here are certainly capable and do perform pelvic exams and pap tests as part of routine yearly physicals. I have never been to an OB/GYN and unless I have an abnormal test result, it’s highly unlikely that I will ever need to see one. I’ve never been to a clinic here that did not have at least one examination room with stirrups etc. General Practice clinics here tend to be very comprehensive.
The stirrups hide under the exam table and fold out as needed. I only had an OB/GYN for prenatal care and a few followup visits afterward before I went back to my family doctor, who has been seeing me since I was 15. If I wanted to keep seeing my OB/GYN I could have, but its easier to have one doctor as I don’t really need more than one.
Why shouldn’t women get their routine examinations from GPs? I don’t go to a urologist for the gentleman-area parts of a routine checkup.
I would guess it’s because women have a lot more plumbing than men do. You wouldn’t want a general contractor snaking out your sewage mains and gutters instead of a plumber, would you?
And a gold star for recognizing that rather tenuous reference! 
Probably has to do with malpractice insurance rates. They’re insanely high if you provide obstetric care, and gynecologic just a bit behind that. Sure, most GPs can do pelvics, but…well, they’re time consuming (and therefore expensive for your practice - you could diagnose three coughs and a pink eye in the time it takes to do one pelvic) and probably not most non-gynes favorite part of the day. Why not just send the patient out to someone who likes doing that sort of thing? Most American health plans, including both private insurance and state medical care plans, allow a woman one self-referral a year to an Ob/Gyn anyway, so it’s not like most women are going to argue the decision.
There was a website (now shut down, fortunately) who insisted you should never go to a female doctor because most were lesbians. It went so far as the advise that if the emergency room doctor is a female, insist on a male doctor or leave. And never go to a female pediatrician because she will be “drooling” over your daughters.
That’s an inaccurate analogy. It’s actually more like having your general contractor take a look and inform you that you should call your plumber.
If it burns when I pee, first I go to my GP. He’ll either give me a shot of anti-biotics or he’ll say, “You have an issue. It needs to be addressed by a urologist.” I wouldn’t go directly to the specialist unless I had a history of “issues” because it’s just not needed. Similarly, I get my routine eye exam from my optometrist. No need to send me to an opthamologist unless he feels that it’s warranted. It would be a waste of the opthamologist’s time and a waste of money.
AFAIK, women here just need to tell the receptionist “I’m coming in for a physical, so it will be a ‘long appointment’.” Pelvic exams are routinely performed and so they are scheduled accordingly, whether or not it’s “profitable” doesn’t factor into the quality or standard of care.
If a woman doesn’t need obstetric care why would she go to an OB?
Oh, it certainly *could *be done that way here, but it’s generally not. Doctors have to pay the bills, too. If your practice is organized to provide 15 minutes of face time to four billable patients an hour, taking 30 to 45 minutes for a full pelvic, PAP and breast exam is going to mess with your bottom line. Ob/GYNs are set up with that expectation, GPs generally aren’t. ETA: A GP could bill a long appointment, but most women I know wouldn’t think to request such a thing, they’d just call an OB/GYN.
In the US, most gynecologists are also obstetricians, and vice versa. It’s so prevalent that they’re generally called OB/GYNs (pronounced “oh-bee-gee-why-ens”). This is starting to change somewhat, however, again due to malpractice insurance rates. Catching babies is ridiculously expensive to insure, so many OB/GYNs are moving out of the OB part of the business. I even know a few who are still providing prenatal and postnatal care, but won’t actually deliver the baby. This lets them reduce their malpractice premiums somewhat, but it also means that their patients are delivering with other doctors they’ve only met once or twice before the actual birth.
I think the best analogy is like getting my car’s oil changed. I *could *take it to my full service mechanic, and he could do it, but he’s going to charge me somewhere around his usual rate of $75 an hour. Or I could, knowing this, choose to go to Jiffy Lube instead - where they do oil changes all day, every day, and little else. They’re set up to do nothing but oil changes, in fact. They do it quicker and cheaper than my mechanic can, billing by the job, not the hour. OB/GYNs are the one medical specialist you don’t need a referral to see in the US, even if you have a managed health care plan. Once a year, you just make an appointment. So it’s not like the contractor telling you to call a plumber, it’s knowing that a pipe problem means you call the plumber first, 'cause your contractor doesn’t really deal with pipes. He could, but he doesn’t.
This just came up on another board I belong to - it seems to be a cultural divide between the U.S. and Canada/the UK/Australia/New Zealand. People in the latter countries seem not to make appointments with specialists themselves, but get referrals when the GP notices something is wrong. Kids don’t always go to pediatricians, either; they can see the same GP as their parents. (WhyNot, I just saw you said that the OBGYN is the only specialist you don’t need a referral for - I assume a paediatrician is another?)
I have friends who see a gynaecologist regularly, and others who have never seen one in their lives. Believe it or not, there is some choice in the health care system, and the government is not knocking at my door telling me who to see and when. 
Well, I think if I needed to see a pediatrician, I’d need a referral, but yes, on some plans you can take your kids to the pediatrician w/o a referral. That depends on your health care plan, though. On my plan I got to choose a “Primary Healthcare Provider” or “PHP” for each of us. The kids could have a pediatrician, a GP or Family Practice Physician as a PHP; the adults a GP, Internist or Family Practice. Since I chose a GP to be my kids’ PHP, he does indeed have to authorize a referral to a pediatrician, should we need one.
Most “managed care” plans (also known as HMOs “Aitch-Em-Ohs”) are similar; your primary doc has to authorize all referrals to *anyone *else, specialized or no, except for a once a year visit to an OB/GYN. But a child’s primary doc can *be *a pediatrician; so she’d be the one writing the referrals.
Sounds like we American insureds have *less *choice than you do sometimes!