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Opinion - Page 17

The myth of the autonomous clinician

We work through constant interaction with patients, reception staff, nurses, colleagues, and managers. Moral agency is not exercised in isolation but through negotiation, shared responsibility, and emotional labour. Ethical models that ignore this fail to describe the world in which general practice
29 April 2026
3 mins read

SAS doctors – the solution to the GP workforce crisis?

The growing SAS workforce, and the stalling growth of the GP workforce, combined with warnings of a mass exodus from the profession, has clearly got people thinking.  The GMC report suggests that the solutioninvolves shifting the SAS workforce into general practice.
10 November 2022
4 mins read
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A tyranny of nouns

Doctors are inordinately fond of nouns. By and large, patients come to us not just with nouns, but with stories which include them but are driven along by verbs, words of action, backed up by adverbs, pronouns, and so on...
4 November 2022
4 mins read

Social media and young people: a dilemma

Social media has transformed the ways we live as a society, forever altering the ways in which we communicate and relax. And this abrupt change to social discourse which has gradually developed over thousands of years is having implications for young people.
2 November 2022
2 mins read

SNOMED CT: working smarter, not harder

General practice needs to become more efficient while improving care quality and safety. How can we do this? SNOMED CT holds some of the answers, but many practices are unaware of its full potential ...
28 October 2022
3 mins read

Musical musings: GPs should be the orchestra

Of course the GP has always in a way been a 'conductor' between different hospital specialists, co-ordinating treatments and providing holistic care, but the unique role of the GP is rapidly being broken up into its constituent parts, through the PCN system
13 October 2022
3 mins read
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E-scooters: how safe are they?

In England over the last two years, you are likely to have seen people whizzing around on brightly coloured electric scooters. While they might be a fun, practical, and relatively cheap mode of transport, just how safe are they for their users
10 October 2022
6 mins read

Where to find a disease

Where do diseases live? It seems an odd question, but perhaps an important one, because we need to find a disease in order to treat it ... If we don’t recognise the location correctly, we end up treating poverty with statins.
9 October 2022
2 mins read
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Burnout, patient and physician safety

With increasing pressures, targets and expectations, and a higher risk of workforce burnout, it seems that both patient, and physician safety remain at risk argues Nada Khan
6 October 2022
4 mins read
2

The USP of General Practice

'GPs are not good at relational care or managing complexity and uncertainty because of any inherent aptitude for these things, but because our role places us into an environment in which they are unavoidable,' argues Ben Hoban.
2 October 2022
2 mins read

‘D’ is for doctors and dentists

The Covid-19 lockdowns exacerbated wait times for dental treatment. Where does all of this leave GPs (and our emergency department colleagues) who are faced with potentially increasing numbers of dental presentations?
29 September 2022
4 mins read
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Ode to primary care

'One does not love breathing.' says Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird. 'Primary care to me is the lungs or heart of the NHS,' Rubia Usman reflects.
11 September 2022
1 min read
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Relational care

The government has gained control over the system; doctors have gained the freedom to have a life outside the surgery; and patients have gained – at least in theory – unlimited access to textbook medicine, regardless of who provides it. Ben Hoban
7 September 2022
3 mins read

Poor choices

If a patient has an Adverse Childhood Experiences score of 4 or higher then the risk of multiple health problems, such as cancer, obesity, and heart disease, increases. Giles Dawnay asks, how much, then, of our hard and well-intentioned work is no
2 September 2022
3 mins read
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