GP TechLead

You may have heard in the news that GPs are going to be getting a large money boost in the form of £250 million to help with the winter pressures. This hasn't been received very well by GPs and the BMA as they feel it's not enough and doesn't really solve one of the main issues in this, lack of doctors. I had a quick read through of the plan released by NHS England, and found some interesting points. You can have a full read of the plan here .

Since the pandemic, GP's have been under fire in the media for supposedly not seeing our patient's face to face, not understanding that most of the changes have come under direction of the higher authorities who requested we try other methods of primary care consulting given the covid pandemic. I can't speak for other practices, but in my area, face to face consultations were still going on if there was a clinical need following a telephone triage or online e-consult. E-consult is an online triage tool that many practices have used to increase access to primary care, there are many but e-consult is the one I am most familiar with. Patient's who complain may have likely forgotten pre-pandemic waiting times for a GP face to face appointment, which could sometimes be up to 3-4 weeks. In this current system, people can get a phone appointment on the day and have their issue resolved, or get a face to face consult within a few days of that if needed. The main difficulties h...

Headaches are a common symptom in GP land. They ironically can be a bit of a headache for a GP to manage. There are a number serious headaches that need proper attention and during this remote consulting era, it takes a lot of clinical confidence to manage them over the phone only. 

Like most primary care doctors around the country now, we're all working towards the vaccine effort of vaccinating our local populations. Some are actively giving out the vaccinations, some in a supervising role, some doing the very important task of organising everyone and everything. Uptake of the vaccine has been good with most people very keen on receiving it in with many others who are not eligible yet, calling up wondering when they will get it. One is the hard parts has been calling patients up to consent and inform them about the vaccine. The cohort of patients currently that area being called in are over 80, and may have issues with hearing that can make phone calls hard. Most of these patients have been done now, and we're moving down the age groups. People who cannot leave their home in my area have been able to get free transport to the vaccine hubs which will greatly improved uptake.

Covid has really been tough for older people, being constantly reminded that this disease is a death sentence for them and having to isolate at home. What has been even tougher is older people in the care homes. They've heard through out the pandemic that Covid has been racing through the homes and a lot of the deaths have been in them. In the care home I help look after, the social isolation has really been getting to a lot of the residents. 

The government and NHS have released their new Covid-19 app. After their disastrous trial on the Isle of Wight, it can be assumed that things have been ironed out enough to roll out for general release. It works via Apple's/Googles Covid-19 API which allows phones to handshake each other over Bluetooth. This API is only provided to healthcare authorities so other app developers aren't able to exploit it to make other apps. It takes the much talked about de-centralised approach to contact tracing, meaning that in theory, the app developer/government wont know which users have been in contact. Countries trying to do the centralised approach have been struggling as Apple refused to let app developers meddle with the Bluetooth settings so have had to adopt this de-centralised approach. Below is the rough blueprint of the two systems.