We talk to Dr Zudin Puthucheary, an ITU specialist, and Dr Eve Corner, a physiotherapist about the challenges faced by patients who get discharged from ITU.
Contextual safeguarding is a relatively new concept, which is primarily intended for adolescents. Recognising that young people are often exploited and abused outside their family environment, contextual safeguarding focuses on influencing and shaping those areas.
Prof Bill Phillips discusses the two crises in USA, COVID-19 and racism, and the role of family doctors. In Seattle, around 7000 doctors and nurses demonstrated peacefully as part of the White Coats for Black Lives movement.
The new GP contract in England now recognises the necessity for clinical pharmacists to ensure the optimal use of medicines for patients within all primary care networks. What about the benefits to the wider healthcare team within general practice?
Everyone of us in the health service has overheard unacceptable rudeness, sly put-downs, exclusion or smiling say-the-opposite-of what-you-mean British insincerity. We need to acknowledge that it is happening. There is no mysterious genetic or melanin fault causing excess deaths among health workers
Professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith outlines how New Zealand have done so well. They are a small isolated island nation and didn't leave it another week. A lot of testing seems to be key. Like everywhere, there were challenges in general practice with dramatic
Additional COVID-19 pressures of increased demand and reduced workforce has meant novel solutions have been necessary. We employed medical students, someone from NHS England, and a retail manager. It has been heartening to see others step forward to support general practice.
We must recognise that as clinicians we are involved in creating a new disease. We must be conscious that the way that we communicate symptoms and risk with each other and our patients has wider implications beyond the immediate clinical situation. Our
How much does it take for us to genuinely express sorrow and compassion for the terrible trials our patients endure? We have pride in the NHS but we have prejudice too. Perhaps it is the NHS clinician that is Icarus, flying too
An individual working as a GP runs the risk of becoming an automaton. Evidence-based medicine and professional standardisation contribute to uniformity and by definition a reduction in diversity. Camus says that “if the world were clear, art would not exist” and I
Back in 1987, Roger Neighbour wrote his seminal textbook The Inner Consultation. Neighbour theorised that the general practice consultation was "a journey, not a destination", and proposed five ‘checkpoints’ along the way. Simon Morgan explores them for the COVID-19 world of remote
Perhaps there is one silver lining to this disaster. Perhaps restriction has stimulated an appetite for change, a desire to be more active and healthy. It seems as though restriction has triggered change, a desire to be more active and healthy.
The coronavirus epidemic has forced GPs to implement remote consultations, minimise face-to-face contacts, keep our distance and put an end to shaking hands. This mandatory distance between doctors and patients, has shown us the importance of touch in our healthcare system.
Hassan Awan is a GP in Manchester and talks about how we can better manage South Asian people with long term conditions and mental health problems. COVID has laid bare inequalities and he talks more about the importance of cultural competencies with
The publication of this new anthology of poems by NHS staff could not have come at a more apposite time. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the vital role of the NHS and the dedication of its staff in both community and hospital
Dr Brendan Crosbie talks about his real time data workload survey in Ireland. He found that GPs worked 9.9 hours per day on average and one-third of that time is on non-clinical work. One in 10 GPs work until after 10pm in
Some reflections on retirement... Ours is a great community. I look back with thanks, but forward with both compassion for the world and belief in our ability to be better than this. And in a deeper parallel, just as we as individuals
Decision fatigue is something we have all experienced. We each have a finite amount of mental energy that we can expend on decision making before our brain starts to look for a shortcut. Decision fatigue is also a well recognised reason behind
Catherine Himsworth discusses the findings of her research in people who are homeless. The trimorbidity of homelessness – chronic disease, mental health problems, and substance misuse –increased fourfold the risk of unplanned hospital admissions.
As a 20-something millennial GP trainee, the sudden talk about the future of primary care is exciting. I once heard a futurologist say, “Don’t ask ‘what will it look like down line?’ ask ‘what do you want it to look like?’” I
Dr Mike Tomson tells us about a community-based contact tracing initiative he helped set up in Sheffield. Numbers were small in this pilot but their experience with index cases and their contacts highlights the challenges and barriers in contact tracing.
Cummings is the third senior figure involved in dealing with the pandemic to have broken the rules, and the fallout has added to the litany of incoherent messaging, opaque decision making and fumbling management that has characterised the handling of the crisis.
Professor Donald Li, President of WONCA and a GP in Hong Kong, talks about the current situation in Hong Kong and the challenges ahead. There have been almost no new cases, excluding imported disease, in recent weeks but 14 day quarantine on
A day does not go by where I do not speak to patients suffering from anxiety in one form or the other. The untold harm being done to their mental health does not make the daily evening government briefings. Other health phenomena
Dr Giri Madhavan and Emma Reading talk about consulting with people who have learning difficulties and adapting to the use of video consultations.
New Zealand doesn’t always appear on world maps but the country has been centre stage during the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to its success in flattening the epidemic curve. Here’s my take on New Zealand's COVID-19 journey to date, its impact on general
The concept of the family doctor has helped to create a false dichotomy: between medical science and technology on one hand and caring and compassion on the other. Yet those heralding the transformation of general practice should beware of what they wish
Dr Gordon Macdonald suggests practices with significant numbers of elderly patients should be considered as "Far End" practices to address the important challenges in this population.
Simon Morgan offers some little known facts about viruses with a handy mini-primer on virology to get you up to date (at least since that last lecture in medical school).
Michael Boland, who has died age 71 from Alzheimer’s disease, played a leading role in the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Irish College of General Practitioners and the World Organisation of Family Doctors (WONCA).
Professor Michael Kidd is a GP and Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Australia. He talks about their response to COVID-19 including the early decision to close their border and lockdown. They have tested a million people (4% of the population) and the number
Practising medicine was wearing me out. Trapped under referrals, a witness to patients' unsolvable tragedies and angered by poor funding, I had begun to question whether this was still my life’s work. My renaissance came in the most unexpected of ways.
Will the COVID-19 pandemic trigger the expression of HERV proteins in some patients and lead to the emergence of new diseases as it wanes, just as occurred after the 1918 flu pandemic?
Coronavirus is exposing and exaggerating deep inequities in our society. Even though it is clear that viruses do not discriminate, data from across the US and UK demonstrate that the neighbourhoods of colour are impacted differently by COVID-19.
Do you find remote consulting tiring? There is no argument about the current utility of remote consulting but we must recognise that we are thinking differently, and then to ask why and at what cost? We should explicitly recognise the effort in
Many GPs and NHS staff have died from COVID-19. Whether our colleagues contracted the virus at work or whether they were provided with adequate protection in their workplaces is, at present, not known. Without adequate investigations into these deaths, these questions will
The lure of new video consulting technology is enticing. Nationally recognised figures have even suggested that video consulting is just the same as a face-to-face consultation, but with some added tech at the beginning. It is not that simple. We publish guidance
Dr Nick Hopkinson is a respiratory physician from the Royal Brompton, London, and Medical Director of ASH and he joins Domhnall to talk about COVID-19 and smoking. The research suggests smokers are more likely to get symptoms and die due to COVID-19.
Whilst humanity has been on lockdown, air quality in major cities around the world has significantly improved. It is a chance to reflect on how we have allowed our air to become so dirty, and why it has taken a global pandemic
Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic has caused disturbance to primary care education for medical students across the country with GP placements being cancelled, it offers potential for long-term benefits.