How often did you have to listen to your parents droning on about how education was good for you? And how often did you answer, "Yeah, whatever," while not believing a word? Well, it turns out your parents were right: education can be just what the doctor ordered.

In any GP's surgery on a weekday morning, you're likely to see a number of familiar faces. These are not the children coming in for vaccinations or the adults with a chest infection: they are the people with chronic problems who feel they have nowhere else to go. Some have mental health problems and are returning for repeat prescriptions, some have long-term disabilities and can't get in touch with other branch of social services, and others are just the lonely and confused who need to see a friendly face.

It's a lose-lose situation. The doctors know they aren't best placed to help these patients, and the patients feel helpless as they again fail to get what they really came for. To make matters worse, the patients the doctor can really help lose out as there is less time to give them the attention they need.

Some years ago the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) set up a pilot project to try to break the cycle by appointing a learning adviser to work in three surgeries in Nottingham. "We noticed that many of the award-winners of adult learning week reported that they got into education through their GP," says Kathryn James, the NIACE learning and health development officer who got the pilot up and running, "and we wanted to properly investigate the links between health and learning. Eighty-nine per cent of people said that learning improved their mental state, while 82% reported similar benefits for their physical health."

The idea was to offer regular patients a chance both to escape an un healthy dependency on the GP and an alternative to the unsatisfactory outcome of their meetings, by suggesting ways they could reconnect with learning, training and even the workplace.

This pilot was such a success that it soon spread to other areas of the country - with Somerset being one of the first on board. Mary Oxley was one of those who benefited. "I had had a breakdown and was attending my GP surgery on a regular basis," she says. "I had lost all confidence and I had become scared to go out. The only time I ever left the house was to go to the doctor.

"The doctor suggested I chat to the learning adviser - and to be honest, I wouldn't have done so if she hadn't been based at the surgery as I would have found it all too difficult. I had an initial interview with the adviser who suggested that coming to a regular group would help me to get my confidence back.

"There were 10 of us in all, and at first it was very sticky. Many, like me, were too scared even to introduce ourselves, but the adviser went out of her way to put us at ease and to let us know we could take everything at our own pace. After two months I was a changed woman. My husband says that I went in scared but came out blooming. I stopped going to see the doctor so often, I reduced my medication, I signed up for another course and even stopped smoking." Oxley went on to take another learning course in work experience for adults and now does voluntary work for the Citizens Advice Bureau and social services in Taunton.

Getting such schemes to work in urban environments is one thing - making them work in rural areas, where services are inevitably more stretched and people may be more resistant to new initiatives, is another. Somerset has now rolled out the project to Mendip and as Liz Johnson-Idan, the coordinator says, "It doesn't get more rural than Mendip." Even so, the initial response has been encouraging.

"We've tried to target those with mental health problems and those about to come off incapacity benefits," she continues. "Most of our clients come from GPs, but we also want to create an atmosphere where people feel happy to self-refer. Initially, the process is about raising confidence and self-esteem, though in the long term we want people to go back to work or into education. Two of our learners have signed up for an Open University course."

But there are difficulties, as the referral rate from GPs has been somewhat sluggish. "It's not about the service," says Johnson-Idan. "It's that some GPs are so busy they seem to forget we exist." Maybe it's time those doctors signed up for lessons in time management.