'Feeling like a deer in the headlights': A qualitative study of registrar experience in early general practice training.

Background And Objectives: The journey of becoming a competent general practitioner is, anecdotally, a bumpy ride. The aim of this study was to explore general practice registrars' experiences in their first six-month term as they learn the science, art and trade of general practice.

Method: This study explored the experience of 12 registrars undertaking their first general practice term using a qualitative narrative inquiry approach.

COVID-19, children and anxiety in 2020.

The ongoing economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to produce significant ongoing stresses for children and families.

Heaven, earth, hell.

Treating patients with substance disorders in general practice can seem like tough work. Think 'substance abuse' and many of us may have automatic word associations such as manipulation, disruption, risk, danger and illegality. It sometimes may seem easy to blame the victim and to forget that addiction is a genuine health problem, and a very serious one at that.

A healthy bottom line.

There has been a lot of talk in 2010 about the bottom line of health care expenditure in Australia, and how we as a community manage, control and allocate the available health care dollar.

Aspirin, flu and general practice research.

A few weeks ago I received an invitation on a stiff white card to a morning tea function at Government House in Melbourne. Being unaccustomed to the world of posh functions and stiff white invitations, and never having been inside Government House, I decided to go along. The occasion was the launch of the ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) trial into general practice.

The complexities of our outer layer.

Abnormalities of the skin should be easy to manage...

Small 'l' leadership.

Recently I attended the RACGP Leadership Masterclass in Sydney. When I enrolled, I thought, 'Yes..

A healthy educational diet.

January in Australia conjures up images of lazy summer days at the beach, long warm evenings, and crisp cool summer salads, made from a bit of this and a bit of that...

Bugs and the big bang.

Now that's a cheery thought! Somewhere more than 100 km below the Geneva countryside two parallel beams of subatomic particles are whizzing around a 27 km circuit in opposite directions at about 99% of the speed of light, doing over 11 000 laps per second. Physicists hope to create a 'bang' that won't end the world, but will unlock some of its mysteries. I confess I have never thought of physicists as poets, but they certainly come up with some evocative models to explain the unknown such as 'dark matter', the invisible skeleton stretching through space; or 'dark energy', which drives the expansion of the universe; or the grandiose 'God's particle' (officially named 'Higgs boson') postulated to endow other particles with mass.

Challenges for children.

This month's issue of Australian Family Physician focuses on communication and diagnostic and management challenges for doctors (and parents) in caring for children. The AFP supplement, 'Evidence based guidelines for the management of three common paediatric conditions' that accompanies this issues provides a clear approach to the management of bronchiolitis, croup and diarrhoea in the general practice setting and gives one page summaries on the particular challenges of those conditions: assessing severity, initial treatment and determining the need for hospitalisation. The health and behavioural issues discussed in the theme articles, such as functional abdominal pain, school refusal, and oppositional defiant behaviour, are certainly difficult for the child's carers, teachers and doctors to cope with and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that these problems are also difficult for the child.

The way we look at things.

There has been a big change in the way I see things. The big picture is fine, but the devil is in the detail. As I grapple with the frustration of putting on glasses to read and write and drag them off again to see the faces that have then become a blur in a frame, I am aware that it is now just a little more difficult to be fully engaged and present in consultations and conversations.

The more things change..

After 5 years as Editor in Chief of Australian Family Physician, Associate Professor Steve Trumble is moving on to focus his attention on his career long interest in medical education as Associate Professor of Medical Education in the School of Medicine at the University of Melbourne.

An ostrich eye view of avian flu?

Until recently I have had my head in the sand about a potential influenza pandemic. I hadn't fully taken in the implications of numbers of people infected, potential loss of life or the huge disruption to communities and services. I hadn't thought that it is not really a matter of if a pandemic occurs, but when.

Preventing cervical cancer.

Every month in Australian Family Physician, and in every other medical journal in the world, there are discussions of new information; descriptions of innovations; or changes in the way we view health and illness that cumulatively or individually will make a positive impact. It is not often that the potential impact appears so obvious and clear cut as the development of an effective primary prevention vaccine for cervical cancer. While editing this month's articles, I was able to tell my 13 year old daughter and her friends about a vaccine that would dramatically reduce the risk that they would develop cervical cancer.