While “hiving off” services from general practices can seem attractive to NHS managers and politicians, in the longer term it leads to problems such as fragmentation of care, loss of continuity, health inequity and loss of holistic generalist input and is rarely cost-effective.

For patients, the lower costs of surgical procedures carried out overseas can make them look like an attractive alternative to private surgery in the UK. But when post-operative complications occur, they can be complex and difficult to manage. www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinica...

Managing uncertainty is a core skill for doctors in specialties such as primary care and emergency medicine where patients frequently present with early, evolving or non-specific symptoms that are common and that do not fit clear diagnostic categories or clinical pathways.

👋Hello from ACCESS-AD! We’re delighted to launch ACCESS-AD, a new @ihieurope.bsky.social project focused on bringing #Alzheimer’s disease innovation into routine clinical practice - supporting timely diagnosis, treatment & monitoring across Europe 🇪🇺 Read our press release: bit.ly/ACCESS-AD_la...

Headline: Albuminuria: The "Silent" Risk We Can’t Afford to Miss in Primary Care I am excited to share our latest article, published today in @bmj.com led by @sophieclaudel.bsky.social : "Assessment and management of albuminuria in adults." bmj.com/cgi/content/...

YT: youtu.be/40iHdamYgfY Faecal calprotectin is a sensitive test for both #IBD and organic gastrointestinal pathology but should not be used where colorectal cancer is suspected in patients aged ≥50 doi.org/10.3399/BJGP... #FaecalCalprotectin #research #PrimaryCare

New paper in the @bmj.com. Noise pollution affects millions and contributes to heart disease, sleep problems, and mental ill health. We outline practical ways to recognise and reduce its effects across patient, provider, and policy levels. Read here: doi.org/10.1136/bmj-... #PublicHealth #health

Community Health & Wellbeing Workers have been supporting over 20,000 households with proactive & culturally sensitive care. This new approach co-developed by @arc-nwl.bsky.social is projected to deliver a £3 return for every £1 invested! arc-nwl.nihr.ac.uk/news/communi... 💫 #ARCimpacts

Factors influencing primary care physicians recommending patients to use digital health technologies for self-management: A cross-sectional study across 20 countries. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

JMIR Formative Res: Factors Influencing the Use of Online Symptom Checkers in the United Kingdom: Cross-Sectional Study #HealthTech #OnlineHealth #SymptomChecker #NHS #DigitalHealth

"The shift from controlling glucose alone to preventing heart + kidney disease could have major benefits for patients + the #NHS.” @azeem-majeed.bsky.social on 🆕 draft NICE guidance that could transform how #T2Diabetes is treated. @pulsetoday.bsky.social www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinica...

What's next for #GeneralPractice under the #NHS10YearPlan? "It is essential the plan is backed up by the necessary contractual changes and workforce developments to make it work." 🎙️ @azeem-majeed.bsky.social comments on @pulsetoday.bsky.social's podcast. www.pulsetoday.co.uk/analysis/pul...

📰 New Systematic Review Shows Giving Patients Online Access to Medical Records Notes Boosts Safety & Engagement 📊Improved trust, safety & satisfaction, especially for underserved groups. ⚕️No added burden for staff 👍Supports NHS’s digital-first future 🔗 arc-nwl.nihr.ac.uk/news/giving-...

Recorded consultations are here to stay, but the current ad hoc approach leaves clinicians and patients vulnerable. Clear guidance is necessary as recording of consultations becomes the norm, write @azeem-majeed.bsky.social and Waseem Jerjes www.bmj.com/content/390/...

How difficult can it be to run the GMC? You provide a monopoly service because no one else in the UK can register and regulate doctors. You decide how much doctors will pay you each year. And you are not at all accountable to doctors because they have no say in who is appointed to manage the GMC.

General practice is one of the few areas of the NHS in England where productivity has increased in recent years. It’s essential to invest in core GP services so that capacity and productivity can be increased further instead of in costly clinical programmes that will fragment primary care.

It was a great pleasure to welcome GPs from across the UK to Imperial College’s Annual GP Teachers Conference. As well as teaching clinical skills, GP teachers also shape the professional identity and core values of medical students and their knowledge of the role of primary care in the NHS.

When examining the proposed health policies being put forward by politicians, NHS staff and the media need to ask will this policy improve patient experience, clinical outcomes and NHS efficiency, and is it cost-effective? Essential questions when public funding is tight.

One of the questions that some of my GP colleagues ask is why they can’t see the x-rays they request for their patients. They will receive a written report from a radiologist but generally can’t view the image. With modern NHS IT systems, this should be possible.

For doctors, the ability to accept some clinical risk is important in their professional role. Experienced clinicians are more aware of the appropriate level of risk to accept. Less experienced clinicians will often follow guidelines rigidly or practise in a very risk averse way.

Digital check-in and triage Kiosks in emergency departments can identify high-acuity patients but their impact on productivity is unclear. High over-triage rates and poor concordance with nurse-assigned triage scores may limit their use in busy settings. www.jmir.org/2025/1/e69528

Our new article in BMJ Open: Triple cardiovascular disease detection with an artificial intelligence-enabled stethoscope (TRICORDER): design and rationale for a decentralised, real-world cluster-randomised controlled trial and implementation study. bmjopen.bmj.com/content/15/5...

I spoke to BSc students at Imperial College recently about what they should consider when applying for an MSc course. One key consideration is for BSc students to clearly define their motivations for further study; whether this is for career progression, specialisation or for research aspirations.

One problem with clinical academic training in England is that there are now many opportunities for funding for doctorates and post-doctoral fellowships from funders such as the NIHR but a major bottleneck in permanent lecturer and senior lecturer posts in universities.

New JMIR MedInform: A Novel Framework to Assess Clinical Information in #digital #health Technologies: Cross-Sectional Survey Study

We sometimes hear that doctors “need to work at the top of licence” meaning they should do work that other staff cannot do. But how can doctors do this when in many hospitals and health centres they lack administrative support, office space and appropriate IT facilities?

The recent deal reached between the UK and EU shows how Brexit is far from “done” as claimed by some politicians but rather is a dynamic and ongoing process with negotiations and compromises - driven by economic, political and global realities - that will continue indefinitely.

Becoming a doctor in the UK is an achievement to be proud of. There are many highly-qualified applicants for each place in medical school. Medical students then complete an arduous course of up to 6 years, followed by years of postgraduate training and professional development.

Doctors are part of a global professional community. This international network allows us to obtain support, advice and knowledge from medical colleagues globally to help improve patient care and tackle the many clinical, healthcare and public health challenges we face.

The funding challenges faced by medical trainees are more than just the cost of professional examinations or membership fees. They are symptoms of a broader failure to treat medical training as an investment in the healthcare system's future. www.frontiersin.org/journals/med...

GPs are managing an increasing number of people with ADHD but a lack of resources, training and support raises concerns over the potential misuse of stimulant drugs. The article from Waseem Jerjes and myself discusses how these risks can be reduced. www.frontiersin.org/journals/med...

Over the past 30 years, the NHS has repeatedly tried to enhance patient choice of specialist providers, aiming to drive up quality through competition. However, my experience is that most patients prioritise rapid access to high-quality, local services over choice of provider.

There has been a lot of recent media coverage about the benefits of GLP-1 agonists beyond their impact on obesity. But we also need to know the absolute risk reduction from a treatment (which determines the Number Needed to Treat) and not just the relative risk reduction.

One of the changes we need in medicine in the UK is to make the GMC more responsive to doctors. In recent decades, the GMC has increasingly begun to act as an arm of the government and the NHS, ignoring the views of doctors, and not acting as a truly independent regulator.

One sometimes overlooked issue in the debate around assisted dying is that if this become legal in the UK, medical schools will have to cover this topic in their undergraduate courses and it will also need to become part of postgraduate medical training for doctors.

Patients are complaining they are struggling to get appointments with GPs which is leading to delays in their care. Newly qualified GPs are struggling to find regular work in NHS general practices. Surely there is a solution that will solve both these problems?

Academic publishing is a great commercial model. Get academics to write articles for your journal for free, have them peer-reviewed free of charge by other academics and then either charge people to read the articles or ask academics to pay to publish them in your journal.

The integration of prevention into the delivery of primary care is essential if we are to achieve a more holistic and effective approach to patient well-being. It means shifting the focus of care beyond just treating immediate illnesses to proactively safeguarding future health.

It’s potentially harmful to test new vaccines against a placebo when there is already a pre-existing vaccine in use. Withholding a vaccine known to be safe and effective from the participants in the placebo group exposes them to greater risks from the disease being assessed.

Should universities place less reliance on personal statements when assessing applications for degree courses? Generative AI tools like ChatGPT raise legitimate concerns about the authenticity and fairness of such statements and how much they are the applicant’s own work.

Counting the number of steps you take each day is a good way to increase your physical activity. But how many steps? 10,000 steps daily is a reasonable target for an active adult. For older people or those with medical conditions, a smaller number of steps may be sufficient.

The many emails I receive from spam journals asking me to submit an article for publication are invariably littered with grammatical errors. Authors are not going to have confidence in a journal they have never heard of if its editors are also unable to write in coherent English.

Giving people online access to their medical records promotes patient‑centred care and is in line with modern expectations of openness. But access to medical records can also result in patients seeing sensitive information before clinicians can discuss it with them.

The NHS childhood immunisation schedule in England is changing. Children born from 1 July 2024 onwards will be offered their second MMR vaccination at 18 months instead of at 3 years and 4 months. There are also some other changes that NHS staff and parents need to be aware of.

Every day in the UK, pharmacists will be getting in touch with GPs to advise on alternative medication for drugs that are currently unavailable, querying medication choices and dosages, and picking up potential prescribing errors. All essential to deliver good NHS primary care.

As a professor of primary care, GP and a medical educator, I am trying to understand why it is possible for a physician assistant with two years training to see undifferentiated patients in general practice but a highly experienced doctor who is not trained as a GP cannot?

I encourage my students and colleagues to use online shared documents rather than sending drafts of articles for comment as email attachments. Shared documents enable real-time collaboration, can be accessed from anywhere, provide version control and make more efficient use of time.

The Government has announced changes to the childhood vaccination schedule including moving the second MMR dose from 3 years 4 months to 18 months. General practices will need to familiarise themselves with the new guidance and communicate with parents. www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinica...

The GMC should not have agreed to take on the regulation of PAs. It's an area that will use up a lot of the time of GMC staff and also turn out to be very expensive as the GMC puts in place the necessary systems and responds to the various complaints, enquiries and court cases.

New NICE guidance on falls prevention is a positive development but successful implementation will need NHS integrated care boards to have easily accessible falls prevention services in place so patients can be referred promptly for assessment when needed. www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinica...