General Practice with Primary Healthcare Section

The General Practice with Primary Healthcare Section actively promotes high-quality education, networking and exchange of ideas on effective healthcare in the UK and internationally, with a particular focus on topical and emerging issues in primary care.

Members of the Section have many different roles in healthcare within primary care (teams) or as individuals. The Section Council reflects this diversity and includes those working in general practice, medical academia, nursing, pharmacy, optometry and law as well as lay representatives and many more.

The Section Council has a sub-group called the Events Steering Committee, made up of Council members and other Section members, who are responsible for promoting the Section and its educational programme. If you would like to be involved, please email the Section admin at gp@rsm.ac.uk.

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If you are not currently an RSM member but would like to receive our monthly newsletter and be kept up to date on events from the GP with Primary Healthcare section, please register here . After registering at no cost please make sure to select 'General Practice with Primary Healthcare' as your area of interest when prompted to update your profile after receiving the confirmation email.

Theresa Nash-Patel, a Council member, webinar chair and creator of the series, provides a summary of the series.

As personal and professional lives collided down unknowable paths, we asked the question what can our Section do to support our colleagues and the communities we serve? This led to a linked series of lunchtime expert briefings to address the mental health and wellbeing of ourselves, our colleagues, and patients, through their, and our COVID journey. All speakers were inspiring, passionate and showed great courage in the work they are advancing.

During the first webinar, simple evidence-based practical strategies were shared. These included a ‘tea break with a buddy- clinician’ or, the opportunity to share our personal COVID story. The ability to listen to peoples stories of experience became a central theme within our next two webinars. Discovering that ‘relational practice’ was central to understanding peoples lived experience, as they navigate birth and parenthood, or Long COVID-19 journey. (i)

In our penultimate webinar, this need to listen to the most vulnerable in our society, those with often no ‘voice’, and integrate the ‘know how’ of relational and inquiring practice became clear, as Kenny Gibson stated to be professionally ‘curious’.  Through choosing to be present to the relational possibilities in each care-encounter, to listen for another, without judgement, we truly connect to our shared humanity.  I would argue it is in the being of ‘relational inquiry’ practice, to be present to ourselves, others, and context, that we can trust co-created responses will emerge. 

Reference

(i) Doane,G.H,and Varcoe,C.(2020) How to Nurse Relational Inquiry in Action.Second Edition