GP articles from August 2011

GP archives from August 2011

Education: GP Training - Becoming a qualified GPSI.(general practitioner special interests)
August 5, 2011... GPSI training is a great way to experience new professional challenges, writes Dr Paul Charlson. GP with a special interest (GPSI) is a role that divides the healthcare profession. Some think it is a good idea while others would not refer to...

Education: Pictorial case study.
August 5, 2011... THE CASE This 82-year-old patient first presented to her GP three years earlier when a small, thickened patch of mauve-coloured skin developed on her lower back. It was thought to be due to a fungal infection but did not respond to topical...

Education: A registrar survival guide ... how to write a referral letter.(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... In these times of austerity, we are all compelled to think hard about whether our referrals are necessary. Many practices have meetings to discuss alternative pathways of patient care, which are then fed back to the PCT. Assuming a...

Medeconomics: Practice team - Make staff appraisals meaningful.
August 5, 2011... Annual appraisal schemes that amount to a tick-box exercise are a waste of time. When staff appraisals were included in the original QOF organisational indicators, they were not routinely undertaken in practices. A well-run appraisal will...

Medeconomics: Viewpoint - Locums need dedicated training.(National Association of Sessional General Practitioners)(Viewpoint essay)
August 5, 2011... Dr Judith Harvey explains why it is vital to devise a support system for the freelance GP workforce. Today around 100,000 patients will consult a locum GP. Locums keep the show on the road. At any one time a quarter of the GPs at work will...

Medeconomics: In a nutshell ... Positive recruitment action.
August 5, 2011... Jean Sapeta on how new rules on positive action when recruiting and promoting affect practices. In a nutshell A quick guide to issues affecting GPs Practices need to take into account the new positive action provisions in the Equality...

Medeconomics: Five tips for buying medical consumables.
August 5, 2011... Nick Coleman recommends joining forces with other practices to get the best prices on supplies. Regardless of location and size, GP practices broadly need the same medical consumables, many of which are small yet frequent buys. This makes...

Commissioning: Patient Engagement - Get the local community on side.(public and patient engagement )
August 5, 2011... Effective involvement of patients in commissioning cannot start too soon, says Dr Mike Warburton. The importance of patient and public involvement in GP-led services is changing. With pounds 60 million of GPs' pay now attached to the patient...

Commissioning: Viewpoint - How discussion with peers helps.
August 5, 2011... Paul Corrigan likens the variation between practices in commissioning groups to the curve of a ski slope. People ask me what GP-led commissioning actually looks like. The best way I can exemplify how it works is to describe how leading GPs...

Plain tales from the surgery.
August 5, 2011... - It's not rocket science A hospital letter that I recently received from an orthopaedic consultant left me wondering whether my local hospital was being sponsored by NASA. The patient had undergone an operation for a capitellar fracture...

Opinion: How I canned my academic respectability.
August 5, 2011... I reckon that Plato, that mischievous imp, knew very well the forces he was unleashing when he founded his school of philosophy in the gardens of Academe, just across the fields from Athens; they must have had some wild parties. Invited to a...

Opinion: You only live once - so why not dive right in?(Viewpoint essay)(Column)
August 5, 2011... Mrs Flush has given up HRT and taken a 30-year-old lover. What the heck, quoth she, glowing like a beetroot on speed and bulk ordering Replens, you only live once. Sitting on the sofa staring at the walls never got anybody anywhere (apart...

Guest Editorial: RCGP chairwoman - DR clare gerada Reforms must lead to improved patient care.(Editorial)
August 5, 2011... It has been more than a year since the government's health White Paper brought NHS reform to the forefront of the national consciousness, yet even now, with a revised Bill making its way through parliamentary process, there is still no...

Opinion: Practice boundary abolition is far too risky.
August 5, 2011... All the major political parties agree that they would like to abolish practice boundaries. A large majority of the public want to be able to see a doctor of their choice, or near their work - and who can blame them? It sounds easy, logical...

Clinical: Journals Watch - Hypertension and pneumonia.
August 5, 2011... Not had time to read the journals? Dr Tillmann Jacobi brings you up to date with the latest research. - Prevalence of target organ damage in hypertension BMC Fam Pract 2011; 12: 75 This multicentre cross-sectional study looked into the...

Clinical: The basics - The management of sunburn.(Clinical report)
August 5, 2011... It is important to understand the assessment and management of sunburn. Sunburn is occasionally seen in primary care, although it is not common in the UK. A basic understanding of skin pathology and the principles behind burns assessment and...

Clinical: Viewpoint - Group B streptococcus infection in infants.
August 5, 2011... Pregnant women in the UK are not routinely screened for group B streptococcus and incidence of infection is increasing, says Dr Raj Thakkar. A third of people may be found to have group B streptococcus (GBS) in their intestine, and a quarter...

Clinical: Clinical Review - Pulmonary tuberculosis.(Clinical report)
August 5, 2011... Contributed by Dr Ian Campbell, honorary consultant physician, University Hospital Llandough, Cardiff, and Dr Matt Brouns, registrar in respiratory medicine, Nevill Hall Hospital, Abergavenny. Section 1: Epidemiology and aetiology ...

Clinical: Practice dilemma - An interfering neighbour.
August 5, 2011... A neighbour of an 88-year-old female patient with moderate dementia comes to see you to tell you she is worried about her friend because she has no family and nobody to look after her. Your surgery has an excellent psychogeriatric team which...

Questions remain over remediation.(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... Decisions about who should foot the bill for remediation remain unresolved, with just over a year to go before revalidation starts. RCGP revalidation lead Professor Mike Pringle told GP this was a 'major issue' to be solved before...

Revalidation roll-out to be accelerated.
August 5, 2011... GMC says scheme would now be rolled out over three years instead of five. Responsible officers for revalidation risk facing an extra administrative burden after the GMC revealed the scheme would now be rolled out over three years, instead of...

GP Diary.
August 5, 2011... THE BALLAD OF PUBLIC HEALTH 'Singing from the same hymn sheet' tends to be used metaphorically in health circles. Not so for Dr Gabriel Scally, regional director of public health for the South West, who has written a ballad called The public...

Breast cancer risk can be cut by 32%.
August 5, 2011... Five years of treatment cuts 15-year risk in women with hormone-sensitive cancer. Taking tamoxifen for the full five-year treatment period reduces women's chances of dying from hormone-sensitive breast cancer by 32 per cent, a study published...

Occult blood test utility assessed.
August 5, 2011... Immunochemical faecal occult blood testing (iFOBT) can predict lesions in the lower intestine, but not in the upper GI tract, a study suggests. Researchers from Taiwan assessed the specificity of the test in 1,654 men and 1,142 women who did...

Benefits of tight glucose control queried.
August 5, 2011... The risks of pursuing intensive glucose control in type-2 diabetes may outweigh any benefits, a review of data from 34,000 patients has concluded. Researchers said the harm resulting from the increased risk of severe hypoglycaemia might...

Research Brief: Memory boost.(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... B-vitamin supplements may slow mental decline in elderly people. Researchers gave 266 people aged over 70 either a placebo or folic acid, vitamin B12 and vitamin B6. They found a benefit of B-vitamin treatment on episodic memory, semantic...

Research Brief: Behave yourself.(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... Surly youths are more likely to suffer ill health in later life, according to a US study. In contrast, teenagers with positive well-being had a reduced risk of engaging in unhealthy behaviour such as smoking (Journal of Adolescent Health Online...

GPs face a difficult commissioning climate.
August 5, 2011... NHS Confederation chief executive says funding shortage will mean GPs may need to pool resources. GP commissioners face a far tougher job than their predecessors in PCTs, the NHS Confederation has warned. In an exclusive interview with GP,...

GP online.com: A round-up of the best from GP's website this week.(United Kingdom. National Health Service)(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... - GP Pensions Toolkit Get all the latest news, information and advice on pensions with this exclusive pensions resource. GPonline.com/pensions - Q&A session on revalidation Take a look at how the plans for revalidation are...

Verdict on German locum criticised by victim's family.(Case overview)
August 5, 2011... Relatives warn fatal locum mistake could be repeated. The family of a patient killed by German locum Dr Daniel Ubani has condemned a court's decision to allow him to continue working as a doctor. The decision has also been criticised by a...

League tables to be 'driven by GPs'.
August 5, 2011... GP practice league tables must be 'driven and owned' by GPs and not add to practice workload, the NHS's medical director has said. Professor Bruce Keogh said the government's commitment to publish outcome and prescribing data for practices in...

Value-based drug pricing plan given the green light.
August 5, 2011... Plans for the prices of new drugs to be aligned with their value to the NHS will go ahead despite criticism of the proposals, the DoH has said. The BMA has said the plans will create an 'excessively burdensome and bureaucratic' system. NICE...

GP cycles from London to Paris.
August 5, 2011... Northamptonshire GP Dr Clive Shackleton, cycled from London to Paris last month to raise money for a children's charity. Dr Shackleton, who works at Eskdaill Medical Centre, Kettering, cycled 335 miles over four days to raise pounds 2,600 for...

NICE is to build links with CCGs.(National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence)(clinical commissioning groups)(primary care trusts)(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... NICE will form direct relationships with clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to support their work, its chief executive Sir Andrew Dillon has said. Speaking at a media briefing last month, Sir Andrew said NICE would build direct...

Opposition to NHS reform led DoH heart czar to quit.
August 5, 2011... The DoH heart czar has admitted that opposition to the NHS reforms contributed to his decision to resign. Sir Roger Boyle, England's national director for heart disease and stroke, told an NHS Improvement event that his concerns over the...

BMA warns of gaps in health reform.
August 5, 2011... Cuts in specialist staff could strip service of ability to function effectively. There are worrying gaps in the government's plans to reform the public health system in England, the BMA has warned. Cuts to public health staff may leave the...

GPs remain at heart of NHS reform.(National Health Service)(Department of Health)(general practitioners)(clinical commissioning groups)
August 5, 2011... DoH commissioning czar tells Neil Durham that every GP in England will have a role to play in commissioning. 'I think it's a more significant reorganisation, it's the first one to have such a massive impact on clinicians.' Former GP Dame...

GPs back respiratory plan to boost end-of-life care.
August 5, 2011... Plans to improve end-of-life care for people with respiratory disease as part of the DoH's long-awaited COPD and asthma outcomes strategy have been welcomed by GPs. The strategy, published last month, includes improving end-of-life care as...

Scottish health check success.(United Kingdom. National Health Service)(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... The NHS in Scotland exceeded its target for heart disease screening by 75 per cent in 2010/11, official data show. Figures from NHS Scotland's information services division show that 41,107 heart checks were performed in 2010/11, 17,528 more...

DoH policy will force GPs to 'privatise' the NHS.
August 5, 2011... Guidance on 'any qualified provider' policy requires choice of three providers for services. The drive to increase patient choice will force clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to open the NHS to privatisation, the GPC has warned. The DoH...

MPs back NHS whistleblowers.
August 5, 2011... MPs have tabled an early day motion calling for a specialist unit to support NHS whistleblowers. The motion proposes an 'active central unit' that clinicians can contact with any concerns, including 'details of inappropriate disciplinary...

Opinion: Ballot Box.
August 5, 2011... 72% of GPs think the government should decide a national set of 'low priority' treatments that the NHS should not fund. Source: GP. -------------------- Did you find this article useful? Why not subscribe to the magazine? Please call 08451...

Opinion: Your say online.
August 5, 2011... - GPC wants talks after Treasury reveals 6 per cent pension hike If the government does increase the GP contributions by 6 per cent, a lot of GPs may well find it more rewarding to take out private pension schemes. As a result of the loss of...

Exclusive: 59% of PCTs to miss efficiency target.
August 5, 2011... GP investigation shows GP commissioners may be forced to make deep cuts. GPs fear they will be forced to make 'draconian cuts' to services after a GP investigation found that 59 per cent of PCTs were failing to hit efficiency targets for this...

Two-thirds of PCTs restrict referrals.(primary care trusts)(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... A GPonline exclusive investigation last week found that two-thirds of PCTs now restrict referrals for treatments they deem to be 'non-urgent' or of low clinical value. The research also found that a third of PCTs have increased the treatments...

Exclusive: DoH cuts back help for GP commissioners.
August 5, 2011... Taskforce proven to help PCTs cut health inequalities scrapped by DoH in central cost-cutting drive. The DoH has quietly abolished a national taskforce proven to reduce health inequalities in the poorest areas in England in a bid to slash...

Medical director calls for seven-day NHS.(National Health Service)(Bruce Keogh)(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... Seven-day working in the NHS will become a reality as clinical commissioners recognise its merits, the NHS medical director has said. Speaking exclusively to GP, Professor Bruce Keogh said he 'could not conceive' that seven-day working would...

BMA against CQC link to RCGP plan.(British Medical Association)(Care Quality Commission)(Royal College of General Practitioners)(Brief article)
August 5, 2011... The BMA will 'strenuously oppose' plans to link Care Quality Commission (CQC) registration to the RCGP practice accreditation scheme. In response to a consultation on CQC registration, the BMA welcomed plans to put back the deadline for GP...

BMA slams 'imposed' pension change.
August 5, 2011... Doctors urged to seek advice as government consults on higher contributions. BMA leaders have accused the government of unilaterally imposing changes to NHS pensions, dismissing a consultation as 'absolute nonsense'. In a document...

GP reporter wins journalism prize.
August 5, 2011... GP news reporter Stephen Robinson has been named medical journalist of the year by the Medical Journalists' Association (MJA). The prize is awarded for a journalist's work over a year. During 2010/11 Stephen revealed how practices faced...

BMA loses fight for fair widower pensions.
August 5, 2011... The BMA has lost its fight against sexually discriminatory pension rules affecting GPs' widowers, after the government argued it would be too expensive to change them. The High Court ruled last week that the government's treatment of widowers...

Fit notes win the backing of GPs.
August 5, 2011... Around three-fifths of GPs say the fit note has improved the quality of their discussions with patients about returning to work, a Department for Work and Pensions survey shows. The survey of 1,405 GPs showed that 61 per cent said the fit...

DoH scheme cut hospital stay by 25%.
August 5, 2011... GPs warn that practices must not face extra workload in bid to slash NHS costs. A DoH initiative to improve patient management before and after surgery has cut the time patients are in hospital by up to a quarter, a report has found. But...

NHS 111 directs patients to GPs.
August 5, 2011... Around 40 per cent of callers to the NHS 111 urgent care hotline last month were told to visit primary care services, DoH data show, while just 5 per cent were directed to A&E. Statistics from four NHS 111 pilot sites - County Durham and...