In October and November 2024, Brian Lambert spent six weeks volunteering as a ‘medic’ at the Mavrovouni refugee camp on Lesvos, working for the Dutch charity the Boat Refugee Foundation (BRF).
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
SIMON STEVENS AT THE NAPC As well as signalling the end for QOF, the keynote speech at the National Association of Primary Care by Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS, was a ringing endorsement of his strong support for general practice. Newly
Living in a different culture is exciting and fascinating. But living in Bahrain we do miss “culture” in its other sense. There is a magnificent National Theatre, usually empty, putting on just a few touring shows a year. The nearest opera house
NHS England is in the process of implementing the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STP), which draws together Clinical Commissioning Groups, local authorities and providers to show “how local services will evolve and become sustainable over the next five years”. In each geographical
I admit that Slazenger’s cat is a red herring, but my wife was in a rail carriage a while ago, close to a small group of friends in earnest discussion. One was trying to refer to the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, but
The news is everywhere. I don’t mean this in the way that I might if I were a dewy-eyed aspiring journalist, seeing fascination and potential scoops in everything around me. I mean that news coverage seems to be literally everywhere; on the
Christien Fortune is a final year medical student at The University of Manchester and has interests in cardiology and medical education. In the fabled land of post-June 23rd Britain and Northern Ireland, politics in the UK has been understandably dominated by the UK’s
It is a Sunday evening. I look across at my GP ST1 wife and see her feverishly tapping the keyboard. I enquire what she is doing. “I have to do a couple of reflections, I’ve only done one this week.” Reflection has become
Death has been banned and we will all live forever. Hurrah! The medical profession has decreed that as long as we take all the necessary measures to avoid risk that we can live forever. Doctors through scientific research have established the major
George Ampat is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon hoping to help patients find non-surgical solutions. Why have an operation if you can avoid one? It’s a simple question with an obvious answer but increasingly surgery is being used where it may not be
Although we would otherwise think and hope it, there remains a culture within medicine that disincentivises time off for anything, from parental leave to sabbaticals. The reasons for this are myriad, from concerns about de-skilling to the fear of the unknown and
The glass bounced off my back and smashed into the drinks gantry shattering a whisky bottle. All I remember is the glass, the blood and that terrible screaming. Glass fights are dangerous, especially as barman, and for $1.80 an hour I often
[starbox id=adamstaten] Today I am writing from the most middle class circle of hell; the circle of hell where sinners are stuck in a perpetual home buying chain. Of all the costly obstacles to selling and buying houses, I have found the
Diagnosis is one of the most rewarding aspects of medicine and is one of the most attractive features of general practice. There are few areas of medicine, arguably just general practice and the Emergency Department, where you get the opportunity to encounter
Bronwen Warner is an FY1 doctor at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She spent a month with Heilendi GP Practice in the Orkney Islands as part of her elective at Bristol Medical School. Patients stumble into the waiting room, propelled by a passing
The English Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, recently sparked anger when he suggested that parents could look online to determine the severity of their child’s rash. The medical community rightly rebuffed this firmly, highlighting the potential harm that could be caused, notably through
You can download the PDF and comment on this article in the May issue of the BJGP available at bjgp.org. General practice is in crisis. One in three training posts are empty, 10% of GP positions are unfilled and this is worsening
Ashika Sequeira trained on the Bromley GP Scheme and is a Locum General Practitioner. Alexandra Grove is an ST2 trainee in General Practice in the Tower Hamlets training scheme, East London. Vanessa Oo is a GPST2 in the UCLH GP training scheme. Work
Rachel Brettell is an Academic Clinical Fellow GP Trainee in the Oxford Deanery. As a GP registrar, the MRCGP Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA) exam is currently at the forefront of my mind. VTS teaching focuses on how to pass, evenings are spent
Jonny Coates is one of the First5 GPs that’s not in Australia. He works in Newcastle upon Tyne. Hospitals are awash with Pharma freebies. CCU is littered with the logo of the latest statin, the psychiatrist’s pen bears the name of the
Aisha Yahaya is a GP ST2 with Imperial VTS who has an interest in effective communication with patients, writing and a yearly resolution to save her guitar from the dusty corner in which it sits. Increasingly, I learn more about the way of
Kath Checkland (@khcheck) is a GP and a Professor at the University of Manchester. She is a passionate advocate of the value of qualitative research, and is a member of the BJGP editorial board. On Saturday, the British Medical Journal published an
Jim Pink (top) is a GP, father and songwriter with an interest in people, rather than patients. Jenny Coventry (right) is a fourth year medical student at Cardiff. In her free time she loves country walks and playing in the Cornish waves. Leo