GP TechLead

Being a GP at the moment is not a popular profession. The perceived impression with the public is that we aren't doing any work and that we're just hiding in our surgeries. Media bashing and Daily Mail articles such as this  are fueling the hatred toward the profession at the moment. The government don't help - their new 'support package' aims to force face-to-face consults and demonise the bottom 20% of practices that don't see patients face to face. GP leaders have told practices to boycott this package and not give NHS England the information to vilify them. I imagine this won't be the last we hear about this package as several urgent BMA meetings are taking place regarding it's implementation.

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.