Does a paternity test equate to the use of a pregnancy test? The latter has long been available OTC but both have the power to deliver results which may delight or devastate the user.

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The focus of this new 10-part series is to highlight some
common problem areas for candidates sitting the clinical skills assessment
(CSA).

Written by Dr MeiLing Denney, a MRCGP examiner with almost
15 years experience, these articles aim to help CSA candidates avoid some
common mistakes.

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There has been a lot of attention given this week to how scientific research should be presented and accessed. 

Consideration is given to how much coverage the eventual research will achieve. This puts pressure on the researcher to feel that they must guarantee a certain level of coverage in order to obtain the funding, resulting in, for example, said researcher having to seek journals with the highest impact factor to publish in. In recent years a lot of emphasis has been placed on open access to research and some funding bodies made it a condition of the funding that any resulting papers must be available in an open access format.

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Reality of wintertime general practice: flu, colds, inappropriate demands for antibiotics.

Christmas time general practice: at GP clinical we have been preparing you all year for any Christmas-related medical eventuality. Here’s how:

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Is nutrition taken seriously as an opportunity for early intervention or prevention of many chronic diseases?

How comfortable do you feel raising the issues of diet or obesity with a patient? Is there a slight feeling of unease at not wanting to anger or embarrass the patient and do you ever feel out of your depth giving dietary advice?

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The NHS Alliance’s annual conference officially starts in Bournemouth today (Thursday) although I attended yesterday’s pre-event with 130 GPs and managers to discuss commissioning.

This week’s GP magazine splash exclusively reveals the results of a survey with the NHS Alliance in which GP support for the White Paper appears to be growing.

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“I need a new activity for the winter”, a friend remarked to me at the weekend. “It’s too dark to run after work once the clocks go back.”

This hadn’t struck me as a concern before as my chosen forms or exercise are not so daylight dependent (even on the sunniest of days you will rarely find an outdoor ballet class).

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Team GP was out in force on Tuesday night to meet Labour’s new shadow health team at Millbank, central London.

It was a short-notice attempt to gain the ears of 70 or so health journalists and allow them to press flesh with new shadow health secretary John Healey and his team.

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Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s comments last week about the extent to which the state should support large families reminded me of a story in The Times last year about family size. Although for different reasons (environmental rather than financial), a GP stated that she would decline to help patients requesting fertility treatment if they already had a large family.

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Last week official NHS data showed that average GP income had fallen for the third consecutive year.

It is news that will come as little surprise to those of you running practices at a time when the rosy glow has long since dimmed from new GMS and PMS contracts.

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