II. The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) is the largest membership organisation in the United Kingdom solely for GPs. Founded in 1952, it has over 46,000 members who are committed to improving patient care, developing their own skills and promoting general practice as a discipline. We are an independent professional body with enormous expertise in patient-centred generalist clinica...

Objective To design and validate a new competency based selection system to recruit general practice registrars, comprising a competency based application form, referees’ reports, and an assessment centre. Design Longitudinal predictive validity study and a matched case comparison. Setting South Yorkshire and East Midlands region, United Kingdom, comprising three deaneries. Participants 46 of 1...

WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW: How effective would an algorithm be in helping general practitioners diagnose asthma? What proportion of older people with undiagnosed asthma fail to recognise symptoms? What proportion of the population believe asthma does not occur in the older population? What systems or supports do GPs need to diagnose asthma more effectively? WHAT WE NEED TO DO: Work on developing a g...

SUMMARY Rural western Canada relies heavily on family physicians with enhanced surgical skills (ESS) for surgical services. The recent decision by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) to recognize ESS as a "community of practice" section offers a potential home akin to family practice anesthesia and emergency medicine. To our knowledge, however, a skill set for ESS in Canada has ne...

The context of general practice makes the translation of evidence into clinical practice difficult. General practitioners interested in implementing evidence met at The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners' 2006 Annual Scientific Convention. We discussed evidence based medicine (EBM) journal club as a solution to this problem, including keys to success and barriers to overcome. The...

A rotation for the preregistration year which included medicine, surgery, and general practice started at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in August 1981. Initially approved by London University for an experimental period of three years, in 1984 it became an established rotation subject to normal review. Special arrangements were made for clinical work, supervision, prescribing, teaching, and ...

OBJECTIVE To describe the workforce characteristics and current responsibilities of nurses working in Australian general practice settings. DESIGN Survey research combining qualitative and quantitative data collected through telephone interview. SUBJECTS 222 enrolled (RN Division 2 in Victoria) and registered nurses (RN Division 1 in Victoria) working in general practice in rural and urban ...

General practice is suffering a crisis of status, as shown by financial, power and intellectual markers. This is serious as a strong general-practice workforce is important to deliver cost-effective, high-quality healthcare. We argue that strengthening the intellectual aspects of general practice (particularly critical thinking) is essential. Most strategies to achieve this centre on research, ...

The need for a cost-effective decision-making process is increasingly seen as a challenge within modern family practice. The role of family practice research is well recognized in countries with readily available resources and capacity. However, the situation is different in a number of countries with limited financial resources and current low research capacity. This article reports on an empi...

Financial and operational benchmarking data for family practice residency programs within the University of Washington Network were established for the year 2000. Data were systematically collected by standardized questionnaire, evaluated for quality and verified, and then analyzed. Revenues, expenses, faculty structures, productivity, and family practice center staffing models are reported, us...