All general practices will be interested in this 4-page document from the Royal College of General Practitioners, which will help them respond to the Department of Health strategic objective about domestic violence. The guidance provides an overview to help general practices develop their own domestic abuse policy. It also includes resources to help the practice [read the full story…]
NICE has developed a series of case studies for GPs to help apply the recommendations from the Common mental health disorders guideline to practice. The case studies which are informed by clinical experience, include contributions from GPs, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists to help GPs when considering the range of treatments and approaches that are recommended [read the full story…]
Memory clinics are becoming more widespread in the UK and elsewhere. They offer assessment, support, information and advice to people with memory problems and their carers. GPs will often refer patients to memory clinics if they feel that they may be in the early stages of dementia, but need an assessment before a diagnosis can [read the full story…]
The Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health (JCP-MH) have published the first of their guides aimed at GPs who will soon be commissioning mental health services. Each of the guides provide a description of what a ‘good’ service configuration should look like, and brings together scientific evidence, service user and carer experience, and case studies [read the full story…]
Healthcare providers are always on the look out for ways to improve the detection and diagnosis of depression in primary care. It’s a prevalent illness amongst Europeans with 6.9% of people suffering from it in any 12-month period. We know that 50-70% of depressed patients consult their GP during an episode, so improving systems for [read the full story…]
Following our posting of the systematic review into the efficacy of annual health checks for people with learning disabilities, this study reports on a project that was run in 2010 by a researcher working with a self-advocacy group in Oxfordshire. The team looked at the implementation of Annual Health Checks for people with learning disabilities in [read the full story…]
The prevention of suicide in inpatient mental health settings has long been a focus for clinicians and managers. Understanding what can be done in community, emergency and general practice settings to reduce the number of suicides has presented more of a challenge. This briefing introduces the National Patient Safety Agency’s (NPSA) new suicide prevention toolkits [read the full story…]
General practices in the UK sometimes offer counselling to people with mental health or psychosocial problems. This is an alternative to standard GP care or the conventional treatments such as cognitive behaviour therapy or antidepressants. However, recent guidelines have not been able to recommend the use of counselling because the evidence-base remains weak in comparison [read the full story…]
One of the components of policy to improve the health of people with learning disabilities is the recommendation that people should receive annual health checks. Following the introduction of a Direct Enhanced Service in England in 2008 to deliver annual health checks, progress has been made in increasing access to checks across primary care trusts [read the full story…]
This Canadian review set out to update guidelines related to primary care of people with learning disabilities. The terms developmental disabilities is used in Canada but is equivalent to the use of the term learning disabilities in the UK. Estimates of the prevalence of learning disabilities in Canada vary from 1% to 3% of Canadians. [read the full story…]
