THE Northern Ireland Council for Post-Graduate Medical Education sponsored a management course on this subject for general medical and general dental practitioners in the Ballygally Castle Hotel from 29th October to 3rd November, 1972. The course was arranged through the Northern Ireland Staffs Council for Health & Welfare Services and directed by two senior consultants of the Industrial Traini...

TODAY is a stimulating time for general practice because, more than ever before, doctors and related workers are thinking how this branch of medicine must progress and develop in the next few years. There are those who are sceptical of any need for change, and yet we imagine very few general practitioners are entirely satisfied with the state of affairs as it exists today. And if we are not sat...

BACKGROUND Once characterised by remarkable continuity of care by a familiar doctor, patient care today is delivered by multiple physicians with varying degrees of knowledge of the patient. Yet, few trainees learn the potential risks of these transitions and the strategies to improve patient care during handoffs. Little is known regarding the mechanisms by which handoffs affect patient care. ...

Through an Upjohn Travelling Fellowship in 1975 I was able to visit some practices where problem-orientated medical records (POMR) have been introduced, to find out some of the advantages and the difficulties in using this new form of record. All those visited were busy service practices so that the records could be studied in a real situation. The practitioners agreed that the standard of reco...

Title: Physician reports of medication use with explicit intention of hastening the end of life in the absence of explicit patient request in general practice in Belgium

BACKGROUND It is now a requirement that patients' satisfaction with the services obtained from their general practitioner should be surveyed. AIM The aim of the study was to produce a reliable and valid multidimensional patient satisfaction questionnaire that could be used in general practice. METHOD Items were originally derived from patients' responses to open-ended questions. The resulti...

Quality improvement according to the Audit Project Odense (APO) method has in recent years become increasingly popular among general practitioners (GPs) in the Nordic countries. APO was launched in 1989 with the objective of creating an e¡ective easy to use instrument for quality improvement in general practice. The core of the APO method is a quality circle, in which participation is always vo...