General Practice
Chronic disease management, consultation skills and community care.
- The Consultation Model How the Calgary-Cambridge framework structures a consultation, why eliciting ideas, concerns and expectations changes outcomes, and the safety-netting examiners look for.
- Managing Multimorbidity Why stacking single-disease guidelines can harm multimorbid patients, how NICE's 'what matters most' approach reprioritises care, and a structured way to deprescribe safely.
- Smoking Cessation Why combination NRT or varenicline plus behavioural support outperforms any single approach, and how to deliver Very Brief Advice opportunistically at every contact.
- Alcohol Brief Intervention Screening with AUDIT-C, delivering a FRAMES-structured brief intervention, and recognising when dependence means a planned withdrawal rather than advice to cut down.
- Weight Management Assessing obesity with BMI and waist circumference, the tiered NHS pathway, and how orlistat, GLP-1 agonists and bariatric surgery fit together when lifestyle change alone isn't enough.
- Physical Activity and Lifestyle Advice UK activity guidelines, why sedentary time harms independently of exercise, and how to turn vague lifestyle advice into a SMART goal that patients actually keep.
- Chronic Disease Reviews How QOF-driven disease registers and recall organise proactive review, and why a good review is complication screening and self-management support, not just a set of recorded numbers.
- Medically Unexplained Symptoms Why 'all your tests are normal' can worsen health anxiety, the central sensitisation model behind persistent physical symptoms, and how to give a positive, validating explanation.
- Managing Incidental Findings Why overdiagnosis is a real harm, how to risk-stratify common incidentalomas from lung nodules to renal cysts, and when 'no follow-up needed' is the correct, guideline-supported answer.
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Diagnosing ME/CFS by post-exertional malaise and exclusion, and why NICE's 2021 guideline dropped graded exercise therapy in favour of individualised, PEM-avoiding energy management.
- Fatigue in Primary Care A structured history-led approach to the broad fatigue differential, the first-line screening panel that catches most organic causes, and why mood should be asked about early, not last.
- The Unwell Patient in the Community Applying ABCDE and NEWS2 with none of a hospital's immediate tests, recognising red-flag sepsis on clinical grounds, and deciding between 999, urgent transfer and safe management at home.
- Home Visits and Community Care Triaging who genuinely needs a home visit, what environmental and functional information a visit reveals that a clinic can't, and how district nurses, therapists and social care coordinate around it.
- Referral and Shared Care Choosing between routine, urgent and two-week-wait pathways, writing a referral that states its clinical question explicitly, and what a shared care agreement must specify before a GP accepts it.
- Sick Notes and Fitness to Work How the fit note's 'may be fit' option reflects evidence that good work is usually health-promoting, self-certification's 7-day threshold, and why a fit note is clinical judgement, not patient entitlement.