Abstract: president of the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in Boston, foresees a future, third era of medicine, driven not by professional dominance or managerialism, but by transparency, improvement science, less inspection and more civility. 1Steering general practice and primary care out of the current crisis into a new phase of professional confidence and clinical excellence -perhaps Berwick's third era -will require attention, among other things, to recruitment, to career structures and retention, and to innovation and transformation.Clustered around Research articles exploring key aspects of determinants, perceptions, and decisions about general practice careers, are three important editorials which directly address these factors.Professor Val Wass was asked by the health department to explore the present status of undergraduate medical student teaching in general practice and the ways in which students' career aspirations are shaped by both the official and the 'hidden' curricula.Her report makes uncomfortable reading, and is an urgent call to action to medical school deans, academic departments of general practice, and GP educators to seriously up their game and focus on the promotion of general practice as a challenging and desirable career destination. 2We do not want to hear the phrase 'I'm just a GP', ever again.It is a pleasure to publish an editorial entitled General Practice: The Heart of the NHS by Arvind Madan, Director of Primary Care at NHS England.He reiterates the statement made by the Chief Executive of the NHS, Simon Stevens, that 'There is arguably no more important job in modern Britain than that of the family doctor', 3 and lays out a series of realistic proposals for the future, not ducking the serious problems that the profession currently faces.It is, of course, crucial that these ambitious proposals for transformation are supported by adequate financial resources, and recent reports on the progress being made with the Sustainability and Transformation Plans across the UK 4,5 indicate that things are moving more slowly than many would like to see, and that complexities and tensions within the plans may be diluting the focus on strengthening general practice and primary care.