Re-reading my review, I can tell that I was very careful even then not to present this approach as a 'cure' for Long Covid, but as a promising approach to manage symptoms better while waiting for a cure ... However, I have
Philippa Jeacocke is a GP trainee in Sheffield currently taking a year Out of Programme Experience (OOPE) between ST2 and ST3 to further explore her interest in refugee health and palliative care. In August 2018 I spent a month working as a
Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. Recently The Guardian, and others, reported that doctors were alarmed that an online test which estimated cardiological health revealed that 78% of adults had a heart age older than their chronological age and were,
Luke Allen is a GP academic clinical fellow at Oxford University. A coffee-break conversation about flexible part-time working and relational continuity Sam (early-mid career GP): Hey, can I grab you for a minute to talk about my hours? Charlie (senior GP partner):
Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. Like the one whose taste in music veers consistently and increasingly away from societal norms and thus is destined to spend too much time sat in darkened rooms accompanied only by an empty bottle
Professor Kamila Hawthorne explores how NHS Wales can reprioritise its resources to better support and use the skills of its GPs to lead innovative, community-led care. It has been a long, hot summer for general practitioners – in more ways than one.
“All men seek happiness, this is without exception”. So wrote Blaise Pascal in his Pensées. But despite his assertion, and our best efforts, too many of us, it seems, find only sadness. In such circumstances we may well feel useless, but that's
Aristotle had it right when he asserted in his 'Metaphysics' that 'Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary question'. More than 2000 years later, doctors would do well to listen to his advice. Before adopting each and every new
Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. If the recent film ‘The Darkest Hour’ is anything to go by, Winston Churchill would have liked a ‘Drinks by the Dram’ Advent Calendar – available last December on Amazon for a shilling short
Chloe Webster is a 4th year medical student, a yogaholic, creative writing enthusiast, and an aspiring future GP. You can read more of her articles. Back then, reflection didn’t really mean anything. It was just another word branded and thrown about through
Life was simple last summer. I was a happily busy wife and mother, enjoying work and keeping fit. I was in good shape, having lost a little weight, and felt great. Until one day when I developed a fever and myalgia. Looking
The first question to practise before a job interview; the one we all know will make an appearance…right?
Well, not if you’ve chosen to pursue a career in general practice. Whilst my colleagues were preparing evidence of their accomplishments and practising expected questions,
Being a patient has certainly made me think a lot. About everything. From the constant waiting, to the unanswered questions, the consultation process, the umpteen tests that get ordered as a snowball effect (turns out once you start seeing doctors, we like
Vernon Needham has been a GP partner, trainer, and police surgeon amongst many other roles in a varied career. He continues to work with the Wessex Deanery Professional Support Unit. Here he offers 25 tips for managing complaints and forming your personal
Times are changing. Long gone are the days of semi-detached houses in the suburbs being home to the family doctor. Lakeside Surgery, Corby is a practice like no other. There is a quiet little boating lake surrounded by a wall of fir
2018 is my seventh year as a GP. Looking back, the learning curve has been steep at times and constant at others. There is much to keep up to date with and this is expected more with each coming year. General practice:
The professionalism of general practitioners continues to be undermined as increasingly we are treated as naughty children who need to be brought into line. We need to make collective decisions on how to practice based on what we know as GPs to
Specialty bashing is not new or uncommon in the NHS. It is particularly directed at those training in general practice and has been a known problem for many generations. Despite a call for change, undermining of this specialty continues to haunt
When the going gets tough, what about those who don’t feel tough enough to keep going? Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. Recently I watched the BBC adaption of ‘Little Women’. Despite the fact that it wasn’t the kind of
Peter Aird is a GP in Bridgwater, Somerset. GP practices are closing at an alarming rate with more and more GPs abandoning the profession as workload rises exponentially and recruitment continues to struggle to keep up with the number of
Mehwish Sharif is a salaried GP in West Bromwich and does locum sessions in the Black Country. I recall thinking about a 5 year plan after completing GP VTS. The plan was quite simple, achieving a good work-life balance between personal and
Martin Roland is an Emeritus Professor of Health Services Research at the University of Cambridge. Professor Roland was a practising GP for 35 years. So NHS patients are going to be able to deregister with their practice and reregister with a practice
Jacket off, shirtsleeved, roving the stage, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt must have said "The truth is…" three times in the first three minutes of his RCGP Conference speech in Liverpool this Thursday. By the standards of recent Tory party speeches this one
On my journey to being a grown-up GP, I completed placements in four different practices as a junior doctor (FY2, ST1, ST3 and ST4). As you might imagine, each placement introduced me to a host of intriguing colleagues – both clinical and
Cat Roberts is Clinical Lead GP involved in developing and delivering primary care services within an acute trust, including a GP-led frailty service Following a few years of basking in the ‘delicious ambiguity’ of general practice we returned to the hospital wards to
Ahmed Kazmi is a GP at Exmoor Surgery in West London. He is also a stand up comedian and his next shows will be used to fundraise for the dispossessed. For tickets go to: www.doctorahmed.net and to donate: www.justgiving.com/doctorahmed. He is on Twitter
Faraz Mughal is a GP in Birmingham and the RCGP Clinical Fellow in Children and Young People’s Mental Health. He is on Twitter: @farazhmughal Making scholarship part of my daily practice contributes to the intellectual challenge and enjoyment of my work in general
Anybody who was a fan of movies, sports, or Al Pacino in 1999 is probably familiar with Pacino’s famous ‘game of inches’ speech. Pacino was playing the part of coach to a struggling American Football team and it was with this speech
Kate Dawson is a full-time remote and rural GP on the Isle of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides. At our staff night out, I slipped on a wet dance-floor, and in a moment, fell and became a patient. I couldn’t put any weight on my
David Zigmond was a small practice GP in south London 1977-2016. You can read Obituary for St James Church Surgery here. This is an edited extract from a letter to Sarah Wollaston MP, Chair, Parliamentary Health Select Committee. Prevention of Suicide. The
Sunil Bhanot is a GP partner in Hampshire, trainer, appraiser and member of RCGP Council.
Our NHS is about to lurch from crisis to catastrophe. Our capacity to change and cope with increasing demand is going to be undermined. Health Education England’s budget
Jane Gall and Derek Wooff, are both general practitioners who worked in Stranraer, Scotland for 26 years and have been working in Shepparton Medical Centre for the last 6 years. General practice is a good job. It uses knowledge, experience, judgement and
David Zigmond was a small practice GP in south London 1977-2016. You can read Obituary for St James Church Surgery here. Corporatism often enlarges and entrenches itself by increasing demands for compliance. Eventually though, unchecked, this will sicken any organisation. Such is
On the eve of the 1997 election, the year I became a GP partner, Tony Blair declared that the nation had ’24 hours to save the NHS.’ Twenty years on, like those who advised the emperor who paraded about town in his
This post was co-authored with Ruth Riley. Ruth is a medical sociologist and qualitative health researcher with an interest in the mental health and wellbeing of NHS healthcare professionals. She is Principal Investigator of a NIHR SPCR funded study: Exploring the barriers
The State of Medicine is an eloquent, passionate, comprehensive, and, in many ways, dispiriting overview of the repeated damage inflicted on the NHS at the whim of successive governments. The frustration of the author, a GP from Glasgow, pours from every page,
The NHS in England is going through a process called Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs). As the NHS England website describes “each system will produce a multi-year Sustainability and Transformation Plan showing how local services will evolve and become sustainable over the
Perhaps you are thinking of giving of some money to charity rather than sending Christmas cards or maybe you want to give a different type of gift package. Or maybe you’d just like to support a worthy cause. UK registered charity Medic
St James Church Surgery 1987-2016: the demise of small General Practices A personal celebration and lament David Zigmond Small general practices used to be very common and mostly popular. Yet due to healthcare policies they are now increasingly rare and almost extinct.
Bahrainis are migratory, especially during the annual Ashoora holiday. Ex-pats and locals alike flee the country, squeezing through Bahrain’s easygoing airport like a cork from champagne. Cyprus is beguilingly close, so there we landed for a couple of days R and R.
I recently attended a talk at the hospital post-graduate centre where the speaker introduced herself as the hospital’s new ‘heart failure consultant’ rather than the new cardiologist. This set me thinking, as many things do, about the strange nature of secondary care