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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.

I’m training, not selling ice-cream.


David Smith looks at GP Training programs and argues that the focus of secondary care placements is not the development of a well rounded primary care clinician, but to address service needs. He has some suggestions to make things better.
23 September 2020
3 mins read

Moonshot or shot in the dark?

Boris Johnson announced plans to carry out up to 10 million tests in a day to allow people who are negative to be able to continue with their life as normal. This "moonshot" is planned to be financed to the tune of
18 September 2020
3 mins read

The Citadel by A. J. Cronin: A symbolic title

The Citadel, a 1937 novel by A. J. Cronin, explores the themes of social and health inequalities, drawing from his personal experiences working as a doctor in Britain’s pre-NHS era. The protagonist, newly qualified and virtuous Dr Andrew Manson, begins his medical
17 September 2020
3 mins read

Continuity of care

Dr Mairead Murphy and Prof Chris Salisbury talk about continuity of care. It is already known that relational continuity of care (seeing the same GP over time) is valued by patients with long-term conditions. This qualitative study identifies that patients believe that
15 September 2020
1 min read

The view from the ferris wheel

Who would have wanted to be a lead clinician in Public Health England at the start of the pandemic? Judith Dawson finds that trying to balance the population losses against individual and economic loss is an impossible job. But in a typical
15 September 2020
2 mins read

Continuity of care and the association with mortality

Professor Jeannie Haggerty and Professor Richard Baker talk about their systematic review considering continuity and patient mortality. Their study confirms the 2018 findings of an association in the context of primary medical care, but also shows that it is variable.
14 September 2020
1 min read

Wellbeing and the primary care workforce

The primary care workforce has been right at the heart of the response to COVID-19, working hard in new and rapidly changing circumstances to ensure patient care continues to be provided to all those who need it in the community.
14 September 2020
3 mins read
1

A short course in racism

David Misselbrook discusses how two books, To Kill a Mockingbird and Sacred Hunger, have helped him understand more about why Black Lives Matter matters and have given him his own refresher course in racism.
11 September 2020
3 mins read
2

Brave new world

2020 will be remembered as the year of Covid-19, a global pandemic that has touched the lives of more human beings than any disease in human history. Life around the world began to change.
8 September 2020
4 mins read

COVID-19 in Wales and Liberia

Not long following the horrors of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, Liberia now faces the COVID-19 pandemic. Michael Bryant, medical director of ELWA hospital in Liberia, describes the day-to-day struggle to provide quality care for patients in an already critically strained healthcare
7 September 2020
4 mins read

The problem of prescribing for pain

Judith Dawson reflects on the draft NICE guidelines for the management of chronic primary pain. There is widespread use of ineffective and addictive pain medication of questionable benefit. However, implementing any change will depend on a cohesive approach across primary and secondary
4 September 2020
2 mins read

How to ‘green’ up your primary care practice

Aarti Bansal is a GP in Sheffield and the founder of Greener Practice. She talks about greener lower carbon prescribing, reducing waste, and improving clinical outcomes. She also considers how we can reduce travel for patients and other practical actions practices can
2 September 2020
1 min read

Welcome to the age of #SpectacularHealthcare

Despite ‘seeing’ more patients remotely, we are becoming more isolated, living our lives in lonely clinics and solitary consultations. The art of medicine becomes abstract, doctors and patients united in their separation.
2 September 2020
3 mins read

Gut feelings in GPs and cancer diagnosis

Claire Friedemann Smith explains the findings of a systematic review that suggests GPs' gut feelings may have a role in cancer diagnosis. The studies, which used varied conceptualisations of 'gut feelings', showed associations with patients initially being unwell rather than with a
25 August 2020
1 min read

In harm’s way

As the country is gripped by fear of a new pandemic it places doctors and other healthcare workers once again in the spotlight. There is understandable fear amongst the public about the nature of the current pandemic and how it may affect
21 August 2020
3 mins read

PHE and BME inequalities: Too little, too late?

Public Health England’s two reviews on disparities in COVID-19 failed to address the significantly higher proportion of ethnic minority healthcare workers who tragically died from COVID-19, and provides no detailed road-map to tackle these inequalities in the future. Reflecting on these uninspiring
4 August 2020
3 mins read

Racism can be overt and subtle. Here’s what we can do.

Carter Singh is a full time GP partner at Willowbrook Medical Practice, Nottinghamshire. An 'expert-by-lived-experience' in racial inequality, it is this passion that motivates him to challenge discrimination, inequality, and marginalisation in the NHS.
4 August 2020
1 min read

It is time for general practice to act on racism in health care

Under the Prevent policy, NHS Trust staff are trained to spot signs of radicalisation and refer cases to the government. Within a systemically racist social system this policy succeeds only in targeting minority groups and those who are most vulnerable. The abolishment
3 August 2020
2 mins read

Retirement and managing the ‘peridoctorpause’

Ed Warren is a retired GP. He notes that a feature of getting older is that you have more opinions and are convinced that others want to hear them. He reflects on the ageing process, cognitive biases, coming to terms with his
30 July 2020
3 mins read

Reflections on working with care homes during COVID-19

The vulnerability and medical complexity of our care home residents means their clinical care is often challenging. However, with the emergence of COVID-19, the scale of this challenge has increased significantly with primary care support becoming predominantly remote and care homes asked
29 July 2020
3 mins read

We had to create a monster

We had to create a monster. A monster so huge, and so terrifying that we were sufficiently motivated. So, we the shielded, are being asked to move from essentially no risk, to an undefinable, unguaranteeable low risk situation. I am immensely thankful
28 July 2020
4 mins read
2

COVID-19, Orwell and the media

Well-respected epidemiologists predicted, from the outset, that the societal, economic and psychological harm from the unprecedented COVID-19 lockdowns was likely to be far greater than the perceived risk of death. However, such views were lost in the narrative of fear that predominated
24 July 2020
2 mins read

Is this really doctoring?

The opportunities to treat more and more patients in less and less time is the unspoken aim of the improving of technology. But as we move into this future, we must continue to courageously ask both ourselves and our employers; is this
22 July 2020
2 mins read

The Prison Doctor by Dr Amanda Brown

Dr Amanda Brown traded her relatively comfortable life in a village surgery for life in some of Britain’s most notorious prisons. However, The Prison Doctor is not just a description of how her two worlds differed.
19 July 2020
1 min read

The fable of the dun cow: GPs are not a limitless resource

If general practice becomes unsustainable, we will lose the most effective and efficient health service we have, and it will not be easily replaced. It’s time we involved GPs in the critical analysis of the holes in the system, before our capacity
18 July 2020
4 mins read
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