The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
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With a continued crisis of increasing workload and reduced workforce in general practice, supporting resilience is a key strategy for sustaining the profession into the future. ⋯ That GPs feel to improve resilience they need to work fewer clinical hours may have huge implications for a workforce already in crisis, and ultimately, for the health care of the UK population. Urgent research is needed to formulate a bespoke assessment for measuring GP resilience to assess potential interventions, and to identify GPs at risk of mental ill-health or leaving the profession.
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Observational Study
Associations between general practice characteristics and chest X-ray rate: an observational study.
Chest X-ray (CXR) is the first-line test for lung cancer in many settings. Previous research has suggested that higher utilisation of CXR is associated with improved outcomes. ⋯ Substantial variation was found in CXR rates beyond that expected by chance, which could not be accounted for by practices' recorded characteristics. As other research has indicated that increasing CXR rates can lead to earlier detection, supporting practices that currently investigate infrequently could be an effective strategy to improve lung cancer outcomes.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted healthcare activity. The NHS stopped non-urgent work in March 2020, later recommending services be restored to near-normal levels before winter where possible. ⋯ An open-source software framework was delivered to describe trends and variation in clinical activity across an unprecedented scale of primary care data. The COVD-19 pandemic led to a substantial change in healthcare activity. Most laboratory tests showed substantial reduction, largely recovering to near-normal levels by September, with some important tests less affected and recording of respiratory disease codes was mixed.