Exceptional Potential of General Practice: Making a Difference in Primary Care

This book highlights the potential of general practice as the natural hub of local health systems, emphasizing the importance of patient contact, population coverage, continuity, coordination, flexibility, long-term relationships, and trust. It provides a handbook for primary care doctors seeking to provide unconditional continuity of personalized care for all patients, regardless of their health care system or country.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 275 pages
Publication date: 13 December 2018
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This groundbreaking and timely book harnesses pioneering precedents, fundamental principles, current examples, and international experience to capture the narratives, examples, and ideas that underpin and showcase the remarkable potential of general practice. If healthcare is not delivered effectively where it is most needed, health inequalities will only exacerbate. The unconcerned and unwell individuals may not be difficult to reach, but they are often overlooked. General practices, characterized by patient contact, population coverage, continuity, coordination, flexibility, long-term relationships, and trust, serve as the natural hubs of local health systems.

Practitioners, who are not only scientists but also responsible citizens, must raise their voices, as no one else can. This book is written specifically for family doctors seeking to enhance local collaboration, bringing together the traditional strengths of consultations, caring, continuity, coordination, and coverage with the contemporary and future challenges of building capacity, community, creativity, consistency, collegiality, and campaigning. It emphasizes the critical importance of working closely with patients, maximizing the use of serial encounters, integrating care, joint working between practices, social prescribing, community development, and advocacy based on patient and practitioner experiences.

Drawing upon the highly respected work of Deep End GPs serving the most impoverished communities in Scotland (www.gla.ac.uk/deepend), this book is an invaluable handbook for all primary care doctors, regardless of healthcare system or country, who aim to provide unconditional continuity of personalized care for all patients, regardless of their problem or combination of problems.

Weight: 520g
Dimension: 233 x 156 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781785231582