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Opinion - Page 13

GPs: Tell your patients how your surgery works

Today it is for you and your colleagues to rebuild and sustain those relationships. You have a wonderful tool for doing this in your surgery’s website. Use it to tell your patients how your surgery works.
12 June 2023
3 mins read
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An ecological prescription for primary care?

The wolves in the forest that frighten human beings are now at last being accurately named: poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, domestic abuse, adverse childhood experiences. Humans like sheep have a basic need to feel safe. They can’t function well until that need
8 June 2023
9 mins read

Keeping behind the curve

"We regularly face a level of demand that we don’t have the resources to meet. We gradually downgrade our aspiration from thriving to functioning to surviving, and our only options look like pushing through or getting out. Simply going on as we
1 June 2023
4 mins read

The hidden shelves – locum and academic GPs

Nada Khan finds two hidden 'shelves' of GPs who might bolster the primary care workforce: the shelf with locum GPs, and the shelf of academic GPs. What is the contribution to the GP workforce of these shelves of GPs, and how might
22 May 2023
5 mins read
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Experiencing Asherman’s Syndrome

Yet, from speaking to other women with this condition, I have learnt that it is often their GP that they consult with first, asking: why are my periods lighter since my miscarriage? why have my periods stopped? Could something be wrong, as
14 May 2023
2 mins read

Networks, nodes, and equilibrium

On any given day, GPs diagnose and treat, listen, validate, interpret, advise, support, and advocate. A large part of what we do, though, is indirect, by linking patients with various other parts of the healthcare system.
3 May 2023
3 mins read
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How much does a GP cost?

In an era where difficulties in GP recruitment and retention are having significant impacts on the workforce, will knowing the ‘value’ of a GP give us any clues as to the projected cost in terms of loss to the system if that
1 May 2023
4 mins read
2
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Why we must stop “consenting the patient”

Slight changes in phraseology can dramatically alter the central meaning of a vitally important principle.  By “consenting the patient” instead of “seeking meaningful consent,” the right of our patients to be involved in choices about their treatment and care... is exchanged with
30 April 2023
7 mins read
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The war in Ukraine: mental health in primary care

Evidence collected by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and the World Health Organization in recent months shows that mental health, rehabilitation and the population's access to health services are the top priorities and issues to be addressed. Oleksii Korzh unpacks the
27 April 2023
4 mins read

Blame game

The population’s patience and tolerance for error seems to have reduced, and we have forgotten what it is to be human. This feels like a dangerous threat to professions that thrive on human interaction.
24 April 2023
2 mins read

Invisible work

The reporting of a limited set of nationally important diagnoses, some risk factors and some quantitative measures leaves a lot more of the work invisible. It is this invisible work that holds the health system together, argues Tim Senior.
23 April 2023
2 mins read
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Measuring meaning

"More validation should be given to the therapeutic benefits of listening closely and bearing witness to somebody’s suffering." – Rupal Shah and colleagues continue their hermeneutic series, focusing on the importance of relational care in general practice ...
20 April 2023
6 mins read
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Imagining the future

The place of Medicine in our imagined future, science fiction, tends to be defined by technology. As in science fiction, so in medicine there is a constant tension between the technological and the human, what is possible and what is desirable.
5 April 2023
3 mins read
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To bend or to break

Is the ‘human touch’ aspect of care necessary? Perhaps not. But does it change patient experience? For sure. And does it take much time? No. I refuse to believe it would add delays and hinder efficiency. The front-line role of reception and
29 March 2023
2 mins read
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“We threw the guidelines at her.”

Careful, caring and person-centred application of guidance is required to ensure patients benefit from, and are not harmed by, healthcare. I’d like to talk about Joan, an 86-year-old lady who had rarely visited the surgery. We threw the guidelines at her...
25 March 2023
3 mins read
2
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Change and progress

In the surgery, patients still express the hopelessness of their lived reality: lives built around sitting; exercise options that are difficult to access geographically and financially; and the cheapest food options too often the ‘wrong’ choices...
24 March 2023
4 mins read
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Living in the third age of medicine

In the First and Second Ages, medicine was transacted between individual patients and doctors at times of illness. The Third Age, in which we find ourselves currently, is associated with the development of a much bigger picture in which this is no
23 March 2023
5 mins read
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