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...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this research was to involve migrants and other key stakeholders in a participatory dialogue to develop a guideline for enhancing communication in cross-cultural general practice consultations. In this paper, we focus on findings about the use of formal versus informal interpreters because dialogues about these issues emerged as central to the identification of recommendati...

The remodelling of the NHS requires a strong general practice nurse (GPN) workforce within general practice. The challenges facing general practice nursing are set within the current policy context and recent available evidence and illustrated by drawing upon the experience of a current GPN working in London. It is argued that there is a need to support the professional development of GPNs and ...

"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...

The purpose of this article is to outline the underlying assumptions, principles and processes of a continuous quality improvement approach which underpins the accreditation of general practice offered by Australian General Practice Accreditation Limited.

Recent trends in general practice towards working in multi-disciplinary teams from purpose-built premises have emphasised the need to study the ways in which doctors and other staff spend their working time.This paper describes a well-established work-study technique (activity sampling), which has been adapted to enable doctors to assess how they use their time. The method needs no observer and...

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...