Integrated neighbourhoods are a collaborative effort of health and social care providers, as well as voluntary/non-statutory organisations, which aim to improve the health and wellbeing of residents and service users. Afsana Bhuiya, Seher Kayicki and Faha Iqbal outline what we know about
Mark Tan offers short reflections on negative descriptors in the International Classification of Diseases 2010 (ICD10)
Immediately following the second World War, an Australian GP (Joseph Collings) observed 55 English practices. His damning report was published in the Lancet in 1950. One must only catch a glimpse of the news to realise that GPs are clearly still working
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.
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
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
Andrew Papanikitas introduces the articles in this Month's Life and Times, and reflects on the meaning of 'Crisis' as it applies to global general practice
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
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.
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.
"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 ...
Alongside Germany, GPs in the UK experienced some of the highest levels of stress, with 71% of GPs saying that their job is ‘extremely’ or ‘very stressful’, with stress levels increasing by 11% since 2019. Nada Khan discusses…
The effects of the earthquakes on child health in Türkiye are substantial, multifaceted and, without urgent intervention, deeply enduring throughout the life course. Richard Armitage reports from the scene.
The independent contractor model for general practice is one of the under-rated aspects of the NHS that rarely hits the headlines. It is particularly important for our professional autonomy and business flexibility.
s anyone else doing the maths here for parents needing to juggle childcare costs for one or more children? What happens when the cost of childcare outstrips salary? Nada Khan runs the numbers.
Teams are the talk of the town in practice transformation circles. They are extolled as the solution for many of our deficiencies– from chronic staffing shortfalls to employee burnout. This extended essay by David Loxterkamp gives a perspective from American primary care
When we use a computer scoring chart and tell a patient they have depression and need medication or even psychological therapy we locate the problem firmly in the brain of one individual. Does this prevent the wider solutions?
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.
"Practice[s] may need to appreciate that by trying to protect one group of staff, they may be exposing another group to vulnerabilities." - Adnan Saad reflects on subconscious gender discrimination in primary care
…the sparsely populated rural and remote areas of affected provinces, coupled with the precarious and earthquake-damaged transport infrastructure that supplies them, has allowed the construction of very few formal displacement sites within these areas.
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
Will this delegation from Australia be successful in ‘stealing’ GPs away to Australia? For those who have been weighing up the options, it may well act as their trigger point to leave, but not without the context of the other push and
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...
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...
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
"The conflict in Ukraine has displaced over 7 million people since February 2022. The UK Government has responded by issuing 219 400 visas for Ukrainians through sponsorship schemes. One year on, we feel there is value in reflecting on the health needs
Now imagine, that for the majority of cases being presented, the consultant condescendingly - and unnecessarily - adds, at the end of the majority of cases, that they had been diagnosed and managed wrongly by the 'incompetent' GP prior to coming to
...After a long day being your child’s GP, I come home. I get a few tantrums, followed by a cuddle 10 minutes later. I am a mum, just like you.
Are GP practices equipped to respond to the current mental health crisis? Here, Jonathan Coates and Nick Hartley reflect on a recent pilot of the role of GP clinical psychologists in primary care - "an experienced, senior clinician independently handling undifferentiated presentations
Inhaler prescribing alone accounts for approximately 3% of the NHS’s carbon footprint. Unsurprisingly, this has been targeted by Greener NHS as a priority area. Here, Emma Radcliffe describes a number of success stories of practices reducing their metered dose inhaler (MDI) prescribing,
The first planned strike action will take place for 72 hours in mid-March and will see junior doctors stepping away from their wards, surgical theatres, outpatient clinics, and indeed, for GP registrars, their practices. How do junior doctor strikes impact on general
They are billed as digital solutions, but they simply offer a locum GP, restricted to video. My experience over the last 3 years leading a GP federation has opened my eyes to the long-term perils of short-term solutions such as this.
My parents being immigrants, enforced into us to keep our heads down and work hard, to adopt a ‘don’t cause trouble’ attitude... Being called these occasional names I still performed well academically at school, it never placed limits. Life was good …
With the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a shift to digital technology that has necessitated both GPs and their patients to adapt rapidly. There is concern that older adults will struggle to adapt to this shift due to their low technology usage
In response to recent earthquakes, the UK Emergency Medical Team (UKEMT) is currently providing a variety of clinical services from a field hospital in a heavily-damaged town located around 50 kilometres from Gaziantep in Kahramanmaraş Province. Richard Armitage is there.
...it wasn’t until I became sick myself that I really understood what it meant to be a patient, or indeed those wider principles I tried to root my own practice in. For me, that once watertight seal between clinician and clinic was
A brief check of the notes and it is a patient you don’t know, taking eight different medications for four separate problems. You’ve probably got 10 minutes...
GPs can hide, to a degree, behind the castle walls and beyond the moat consisting of front-line administrative staff. But I ask myself two questions: does that mean we are in an ‘ivory tower’; and do we have a ‘drawbridge mentality’? Emilie
Alex Pavitt argues that we need a systematic shift from focusing on appointment quantity to consider appointment quality as we work towards embracing and combating the overall problem of ‘multimorbidity’.
Foell and colleagues argue that assembly-line approaches in manufacturing rely on accurately measuring the time it takes to perform tasks in a digitalised workplace. They juxtapose this with the concept of time as the time it takes in the mystery of General
The phrase ‘we can’t go on like this’ is frequently banded around on social media in relation to the NHS. However, it seems that the staff working within this organisation can, and are; but at what cost?
