No, Tattie, I don't understestimate them at all, believe me. As you say, some are / have... and many aren't / don't. We can't but generalise about a General Pracitioner, can we? ;-) So you can't pick up an individual example & say "See..." really, can you? I'm not a medical man, I'm IT. Therefore, if I may draw a parallel...

There are helpdesks ("I'm just going to read down my checklist, partly because I'm under orders to do so, and partly because I know sod all, so I can't do owt else") and there are helpdesks (I've occasionally had to do helpdesk work; the best incident, oddly enough, was in the NHS - Sister A authorised Sister B's account request, whilst Sister B... and neither had the authority & hoped no-one would notice - some miserable pedant did & gently pointed this out to Sister A! ;-) ). The GP is just that - a (good!) helpdesk. Very simplistically, they field the first enquiry & work out what to do with it. They may have some extra knowledge that allows them to deal with particular cases, but they don't have to have that. What they do have to be able to do is 1) work out whether they can deal with it, and 2) work out who it needs to be passed onto if they can't (and that may be as simple as asking the next desk over, cos next desk over has some different extra knowledge).

That's a GP in a nutshell, isn't it? Well worth talking to properly, same as a good helpdesk. Tell them everything you can think of, ask them all the questions you want, and find another one if you think they've stopped listening (I never have). The only time I'll ignore a doctor is if they start talking nutrition or alcohol - the former, no-one knows enough about to lay down any laws, the latter are a fraudulent attempt at social engineering. Do not ask, cos there we drift into thread hijack territory! ;-)