Category: Coronavirus

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.

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 are taking place in the background that receive little to no media attention.

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 practice and why New Zealand got it right.

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 for.

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).

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 this and take it into account. The cognitive load associated with what we are doing is much higher.