Category: Opinion

The recent conflict has led to the Palestinian Ministry of Health offices being bombed and the main Palestinain COVID-19 laboratory being targeted also. Our medical colleagues are overwhelmed and struggling for resources. Abdullah Albeyatti gives us a glimpse as to the conditions in which our fellow doctors are working.

The pressure is building up in General Practice and Primary Care. Will things get better? Will things get even worse? Will General Practice have a future as the greatest of all the medical professions? David Mummery gives us his take on problems with the partnership model and future possibilities.

The role of a GP is not merely clinical management, but committing to a person-centred approach. Might the Covid-19 pandemic have caused us to lose some of that ‘real’ touch with our patients? Rabia Aftab enters the face to face consultation debate.

Syed Ishaq Husain and his colleagues are thinking globally and acting locally. Here they show us how the UN Sustainability Goals and Materiality Assessments can be used as tools for General Practice.

Martin Benfield shares his particular consulting style, aiming to make the history taking more transparent to the patient, helping the patient to see in advance where the doctor is going.

Covid has changed much. But Darren Puttock and Gailash Panray ask us to consider the possible long term impacts on general practice in terms of recruitment of trainees into the profession.

What is it to be a GP? Many are keen to tell us what extra tasks we should be doing. Sati Heer-Stavert suggests we go back to Plato’s theory of forms to reflect on what GPness actually means.

Do you remember the 1990s Defeat Depression Campaign? Do you remember we were told that anti-depressants were safe, effective and non-addictive? Marion Brown reminds us of the sad truths that we have since learned – to our patients’ cost.

The upheavals of the last year have meant that trust needs to be managed differently. Joanne Reeve examines the role of both ‘scientia’ and ‘caritas’ in the doctor / patient relationship.

The 2020 Lancet Countdown on health and climate change finds that excess red meat consumption is causing nearly a million deaths globally every year. Laura Freeman and Shireen Kassam argue that it is time for family doctors to support patients to remove red meat from the diet.

Muslims form one third of the Black and Minority Ethnic group in the UK and are ethnically diverse. There is substantive evidence of racial inequalities in healthcare. Jamila Sherif tells about the problem of unconscious bias in Muslim womens’ experiences of healthcare.