Merope Mills’ description of the death of Martha, her 13 year old daughter, is a raw and harrowing account of the mistakes doctors made that led to Martha’s deterioration and ultimately her death. Nada Khan evaluates the concept of a Martha’s rule,
As part of a Student Selected Component focussing on frailty in primary care, supervised by Paul McNamara, Scott Wylie had the chance to learn directly from GPs and attending local frailty services. As part of the project, he also carried out an
In this episode, we talk to Dr Victoria Welsh and Dr Claire Burton about MSK consults during and after Covid.
What can patients who recall their experience of death during a cardiac arrest tell us about consciousness? Armando Henrique Norman explores
"Henry Marsh is a retired veteran neurosurgeon, recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. He perceives, with reluctant realism, the coming end of his own life and responds with this remarkable and very readable collage of a book." - David
I had progressed from A-Levels into becoming a GP... without pausing for breath - or allowing time for the aspect of my professional practice I enjoyed the most; teaching. But not clinical or consultation skills; instead, anatomy.
Doctors.net.uk recently reported that some colleges, including the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Physicians did more than break even on exam costs. Nada Khan investigates.
Losing my father earlier this year changed me. It changed me as a person, it changed me as a mother and it changed me as a doctor.
In this episode, we talk about how to manage patients' gut feelings in practice.
It has been stated that the Labour party would ‘bring back the family doctor.’ Emilie Couchman discusses the issue with colleagues and invites politicians to stop playing to the gallery and start talking those who have to make those policies work.
As our NHS shows increasing signs of its own sickness, many are calling for more funds, staffing, and technology. These may be necessary but are certainly not sufficient. What else of importance are we missing?
In relying on a limited and necessarily technical professional vocabulary, we often deny ourselves precisely those tools which would help us understand and treat our patients’ difficulties, and indeed our own, muses Ben Hoban
"I was very impressed by all those professionals working hard to make a difference for other people. I recognised myself in so many of the patient experiences described." – Elke Hausmann provides an overview of the 'Long COVID: what needs to happen
Some of us will welcome this opportunity to shine a light onto the events that took place in the early stages of the pandemic. But what is the right way to look at our response to COVID, and what’s happening in other
The BJGP podcast is taking a two week summer break, but we're back on 5 September.
Why do people consult medial opinion? Alex Burrell looks at a classic paper on the the 5 triggers to seeking medical advice.
It seems unlikely that these things can be reduced to a few simple bullet points, and yet, it’s hard to resist the allure of the headlines, with their subtext that the universe obeys a hidden code, and that if we only pay
This beautifully-produced, sensitive memoir and art history begins with a quote from Euripides, capturing the yearning of anyone who has been bereaved, “Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream”.
"Jane Monckton Smith argues that people rarely murder their partners or ex-partners on a whim. Rather, almost invariably, the killing is the culmination of a clearly defined eight-stage timeline. By breaking down the domestic homicide timeline into these eight distinct phases, Monckton
A wise piece of advice helped enormously. “You don’t have to solve every problem in a single consultation,” advised my father.
But being on one pole of a restrictions-versus-protections continuum is a long way from swallowing undiluted anti-vax Kool-Aid, isn’t it? ... Surely, being lukewarm on masking doesn’t mean you’re going to deny the evidence on vaccines?
The BJGP podcast is taking a two week summer break, but we're back on 5 September.
Richard Armitage asserts that the art of effectively deploying this knowledge with professionalism and wisdom is rooted in the discipline of philosophy. In 2022-23 he attended a masterclass in bridging these two domains for healthcare professionals.
"Understanding Allergy is a book that I think will have a profound effect on my practice as a GP. It is packed full of interesting facts but crucially, it also does exactly what it says on the tin — it helps you
Tim Sanders views the “rewiggling” of the Swindale Beck in the Lake District as a metaphor for a need to nurture and cherish core aspects of generalism, continuity and relationship-based care within the role of the GP
So, how can GPs help their patients in facing transformative decisions? The advice, helpfully explained by Richard Armitage, is to reframe the decision-making process with which we approach them.
General Practice, then, shares the values of both the dinner date and the mobile phone, and this is reflected in the way patients consult differently depending on context, preferring ease of access for simple acute problems and continuity of care for complex
In this episode, we talk to Line Pedersen and Anne Sophie Oxholm about what motivates Danish GPs in practice.
Nigel Masters has a déjà vu experience as he looked onto the ‘White screen’ of a newly registered patient and finds empty allergy fields, problem lists, consultations and immunisation screens.
"I was startled to notice an under-confidence in my formulation of dermatological diagnoses, calling my supervisor to review patients more frequently than usual. It soon dawned on me that there was a pattern to my reticence. With my White patients, I was
Given the increasingly multidisciplinary system we work in, perhaps no one individual can be expected to take responsibility for championing continuity.
This warning is not about climate change. Skip to the last paragraph to get your warning or keep reading to understand why we ignore warnings.
In this episode, we talk to Charlie Coombs about micro-teams in primary care and how these might impact on continuity and patient care
"I firstly prompted GPT-4 to “Answer the following as if you were a GP trainee in the UK.” I then asked [it] each of the 45 text-only questions ...from the RCGP AKT practice paper"
Submissions are invited for the 2022/2023 Rose Prize for the best submission in the history of UK general practice/primary care. Deadline for final submission is November 1 2023
The Independent Pregnancy Loss Review, published in July 2023, offers recommendations to improve care for women and their families experiencing pregnancy loss, and includes specific advice for primary care.
Clinical codes are of course created by the machines’ human lackeys, but sometimes betray a way of thinking that is hard to relate to. Ben Hoban muses on how we record clinical consultation data.
In this episode, we talk to Professor Jonathan Mant about stroke risk and how to follow up patients with atrial fibrillation.
The term 'pathway' is commonly used within the NHS to describe the sequence of steps and services involved in a patient's care. While ‘pathway’ may be familiar and well-understood among healthcare professionals, this is far from the case with the public.
"... machines will soon become superior to doctors in all domains of health care, where the Moravec paradox will cease to apply."