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BJGP Life

BJGP Life

The BJGP is the world-leading primary care journal. At BJGP Life we add multi-media comment and opinion for the primary care community.

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The Kobayashi Maru test

A number of storylines within the Star Trek franchise refer to a combat simulation in which a stranded starship, the Kobayashi Maru, must be rescued, but in which any attempt to do so inevitably results in failure. Ben Hoban can relate...
15 September 2023
3 mins read
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Martha’s rule

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,
14 September 2023
4 mins read
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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

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
2 September 2023
2 mins read
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What is the right response to COVID?

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
30 August 2023
6 mins read

How to make a decision

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
27 August 2023
3 mins read
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‘We want them infected’ by Jonathan Howard

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?
23 August 2023
5 mins read
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Book review: Understanding Allergy

"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
19 August 2023
6 mins read
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Rewiggling General Practice

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
18 August 2023
2 mins read
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Facing both ways

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
16 August 2023
3 mins read
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The white screen of death is back again?

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.
14 August 2023
1 min read
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Codes

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.
2 August 2023
3 mins read
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