BACKGROUND Quality of care in general practice may be affected by the team climate perceived by its health and non-health professionals. Better team working is thought to lead to higher effectiveness and quality of care. However, there is limited evidence available on what affects team functioning and its relationship with quality of care in general practice. This study aimed to explore individ...

Clinical practice guideline (CPG) activities must be planned carefully for efficient use of available resources and evidence-based implementation. De novo development of CPGs may sometimes 'recreate the wheel' and delay implementation. Three innovative alternatives to de novo CPG development (adopt, contextualise or adapt) are outlined, which have greater potential than de novo development to b...

"Building Your Own Future: an Agenda for General Practice" is a strategy document currently being sent by the General Medical Services Committee to all general practitioners in Britain. It raises a series ofquestions about what general practice should be and how it should be organised andfunded, and the committee wants the issues debated as widely as possible. We have commissioned seven article...

General practice secondments are being increasingly undertaken by specialist registrars in accident and emergency (A&E) medicine. This paper describes how two A&E trainees arranged general practice secondments and the experiences gained. There follows a discussion of the benefits to the general practice and trainees involved, together with a contemporary consideration of the interaction between...

BACKGROUND It is current UK policy to expand the numbers of newly qualified doctors entering training to become GPs, to meet increased demand. AIM To report on trends in young doctors' views on the attractiveness of general practice as a career, compared with hospital practice. DESIGN AND SETTING Questionnaire surveys in the UK. METHOD Surveys of doctors, 3 years after graduation, conduct...

BACKGROUND Recent years have seen an increasing corporatization of general practice. OBJECTIVE This paper considers how divisions of general practice should respond to the corporatization of general practice. DISCUSSION Corporate models are an economically rational outcome of structural features of Medicare funding for Australian general practice. One limitation of these structures is that ...

BACKGROUND Postgraduate training in general practice aims to develop clinical competence. However, little is known about its effect on trainees' development of clinical skills. AIM To assess the acquisition of clinical skills during a 3-year training programme and to evaluate whether a satisfactory level is achieved towards the end of training. DESIGN OF STUDY Cross-sectional design. SETT...