BJGP Interviews

The British Journal of General Practice
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Listen to BJGP Interviews for the latest updates on primary care and general practice research. Hear from researchers and clinicians who will update and guide you to the best practice. We all want to deliver better care to patients and improve health through better research and its translation into practice and policy. The BJGP is a leading international journal of primary care with the aim to serve the primary care community. Whether you are a general practitioner or a nurse, a researcher, we publish a full range of research studies from RCTs to the best qualitative literature on primary care. In addition, we publish editorials, articles on the clinical practice, and in-depth analysis of the topics that matter. We are inclusive and determined to serve the primary care community. BJGP Interviews brings all these articles to you through conversations with world-leading experts. The BJGP is the journal of the UK's Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). The RCGP grant full editorial independence to the BJGP and the views published in the BJGP do not necessarily represent those of the College. For all the latest research, editorials and clinical practice articles visit BJGP.org (https://www.bjgp.org). If you want all the podcast shownotes plus the latest comment and opinion on primary care and general practice then visit BJGP Life (https://www.bjgplife.com).

  1. 4 DAYS AGO

    Designing neighbourhood urgent care: A general practice perspective

    Today, we’re speaking to Dr Mike Holmes, a GP in Yorkshire and Chair of Nimbuscare, a local GP-led multi-neighbourhood provider. Title of paper: Neighbourhood delivery of urgent care in North Yorkshire, UK Available at: https://bjgp.org/content/76/764/133 Neighbourhood-based urgent care, led by GP Multineighbourhood providers, can reduce reliance on hospitals and NHS 111. Delivering urgent care in community settings is more cost effective than Urgent Treatment Centre and Emergency Departments attendances. Digital integration and shared clinical systems improve safety, responsiveness, and patient experience. Co-locating operational and clinical teams streamlines service delivery and enables operational and quality oversight. Sustained impact requires recurrent funding and performance measures that reflect system-wide improvement rather than single-provider metrics.

    24 min

  2. 24 FEB

    Delayed, declined, or disengaged? Understanding childhood vaccination patterns

    Today, we’re speaking to Dr Karol Basta, a Public Health Registrar based in London. Title of paper: Predictors of Childhood Vaccination Uptake and Timeliness in a Diverse Urban Population Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0319 Childhood vaccination rates have declined in the UK, with inequalities in urban, deprived, and ethnically diverse populations. Previous studies have lacked individual-level clinical data or did not explore both uptake and timeliness. We analysed 13 years of routinely collected primary care data for over 37,000 children in a diverse London borough to identify predictors of uptake and timeliness. Distinct sociodemographic and clinical factors were associated with incomplete and delayed vaccination, offering timely insights as responsibility for vaccination services shifts closer to local systems and place-based commissioning. Transcript This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions. Speaker A 00:00:00.880 - 00:00:52.000 Hi and welcome to BJJP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for taking the time to listen to this podcast today. In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Carol Basta. Carol is a public health registrar based in London and we're here to talk about the paper she's recently published here in the bjgp, which is titled Predictors of Childhood Vaccination Uptake and Timeliness in a Diverse Urban Population. So, hi, Carol, it's really lovely to meet you and to talk about this work. And I guess just to start, I wanted to put this work into context. We know that in the uk, overall childhood vaccination rates have unfortunately been declining. Could you talk us through some of the current challenges around vaccination, especially in urban and diverse areas? Speaker B 00:00:52.720 - 00:02:06.750 Yep. So we know vaccinations are really powerful and cost effective tools we have in giving children the best start in life life. But unfortunately, in the UK, since 2012, the uptake has been declining and actually since 2021, none of the vaccines in England have reached the 95% target recommended by the WHO to stop communicable disease outbreaks. And the kind of negative consequences of this aren't just sort of future hypothetical risks. We've already been seeing vaccine preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough resurgences, and this is especially in certain parts of the uk, such as London or the northwest of England. So no uptake of vaccines is decreasing and vaccine preventable diseases are increasing. But that's not the full picture. We also know, for example, following work done by, at the time, Public health England in 2017, there are avoidable inequalities across the childhood vaccination program nationally, for example, linked to deprivation, geography and ethnicity. However, what was missing was really kind of contemporary granular evidence on the social and clinical factors associated with unequal vaccine outcomes, especially in diverse urban environments. Speaker A 00:02:06.990 - 00:02:16.670 And I know this was highlighted as well during COVID but there is a mistrust of health services amongst some communities as well, which might be playing into this. Speaker B 00:02:17.470 - 00:03:11.120 Yeah, exactly. So at the time when I was working in Lamb of Council, we knew qualitatively from talking to our community and talking to our local GP partners, that there was kind of sense of rising mistrust in healthcare services, but also rising difficulties with actually access to services. And that doesn't just affect whether or not people can get the vaccine, for example, it also affects whether they can have conversations about vaccines and the kind of continuity of care and building up those relationships. And so this is what we had kind of on a local level, but we knew that there was also national feelings and sentiments around mistrust, not just national, but actually globally vaccination mistrust from the COVID 19 pandemic. And there were worries that this had run off into the childhood vaccination program as well, that it hadn't just confined itself to Covid vaccines. Speaker A 00:03:11.440 - 00:03:41.490 So this was a study looking at predictors of routine childhood vaccination from 40 general practices in Lambeth and London, which is a pretty ethnically and socioeconomic demographically diverse borough. And you looked here at the vaccination uptake and timeliness and some of the predictors for these. This was a really big sample. But just to underline the population here, tell us more about the demographics in Lambeth as a borough in terms of ethnicity, because that's where you were based when this work was done. Speaker B 00:03:41.890 - 00:04:32.250 Yeah, exactly. So Lambeth is an inner London borough and it is very ethnically diverse, it's very densely populated, but it also has some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country. And part of the strengths of this study is that we were able to use detailed ethnic subgroup breakdowns. So, for example, rather than using the broad category of South Asian, we were able to split this down into Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, et cetera. And this was really important because this aligns with national health equity guidance. We know that health outcomes actually vary between the details, subgroups. There's some evidence to suggest that, but it was also important following local community engagement work, where people repeatedly told us these kind of big, broad groups don't reflect how we self identify. Speaker A 00:04:32.490 - 00:04:39.530 And I wanted to just move on to the results here, so can you start talking us through some of the associations based on deprivation to start with? Speaker B 00:04:39.690 - 00:06:22.410 Yeah, sure. So we looked at two main outcomes. We looked at vaccination uptake, so that's whether children had received their vaccines at any time point during the study. And we also looked at vaccination timeliness. And vaccination timeliness is important because although a child might eventually go on to receive their vaccine, it leaves them. They're late, it leaves them unprotected for at times when they're most potentially likely to get unwell. And what we found with deprivation in uptake, there was really clear patterns associated by deprivation. There was actually children living in more deprived areas were progressively less likely to be vaccinated compared with those living in the least deprived areas. So, for example, children living in the most deprived 20% of our population were about a third less likely to be fully vaccinated compared to those living in the least deprived areas. This kind of wasn't just a straight out deprivation. There was also lower uptake linked to other markers of social vulnerability, such as being born outside of eco, or such as children having safeguarding involvement. And so that was what we found for uptake. But what was interesting is the findings for timeliness didn't mirror this. So whilst those living deprivation were less likely to be vaccinated, if we zoom in on just the population that were vaccinated and think about were they vaccinated on time, we didn't find that children living in deprivation were less likely to be vaccinated on time. We found no difference. And there was a similar pattern for other markers of social vulnerability, such as safeguarding involvement. They have a lower uptake, but it wasn't associated with kind of untimely vaccination. Speaker A 00:06:22.650 - 00:06:31.210 And you've touched upon this, but there was a really striking result here in terms of children who were born outside of the uk. So can you talk us through this? Speaker B 00:06:31.530 - 00:06:59.060 Yeah. So we also found that children born outside of the UK were much less likely to be vaccinated compared to children born inside the uk. However, if again, we zoom in on just those vaccinated and look at timeliness, we actually find the opposite. So if you were born outside of the uk, you were more likely to have your vaccine delivered on time compared to those who were born in the uk? Speaker A 00:06:59.380 - 00:07:03.380 Sure, yeah. So talk us through some of the reasons that you think that this might be happening. Speaker B 00:07:03.380 - 00:08:30.800 Yeah, I think these findings, the difference between uptake and timeliness, not having the same predictors and in some case having the opposite patterns being shown are really quite interesting. And they're kind of a few possible explanations as to why this might be. One is perhaps potentially there's a form of selection going on. So when we look at only children who get vaccinated in groups with lower overall uptake, for example, children of non white British ethnicity, or as we've said, children not born in the uk, the children who do get vaccinated may represent more engaged, health literate or well supported families. And that same engagement may...

    20 min

  3. 17 FEB

    From swabs to urine sampling: Rethinking cervical screening in general practice

    Today, we’re speaking to Prof Emma Crosbie, Professor of Gynaecological Oncology based at the University of Manchester. Title of paper: Urine human papillomavirus testing for cervical screening in a UK general screening population: a diagnostic test accuracy study Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0105 The switch from primary cytology to primary human papillomavirus testing has enabled innovations in self-sampling for cervical screening. This study shows that urine self-collected with a first-void urine collection device has similar diagnostic test accuracy and acceptability to cervical sampling in a general screening population. Urine self-sampling has real-world potential as an alternative cervical screening option. Transcript This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions. Speaker A 00:00:01.440 - 00:01:07.140 Hello and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate Editors of the bjgp. Thanks for listening to this podcast today. In today's episode, we're speaking to Professor Emma Crosby, who is professor of Gynecological Oncology based at the University of Manchester. We're here to talk about her really exciting paper that's recently been published in the December 2025 issue of the BJGP. The paper is titled Urine Human Papillovirus Testing for Cervical Screening in UK General Screening Population A Diagnostic Test Accuracy Study. So, hi Emma, it's lovely to meet you and to talk about this paper. I really just wanted to start off talking a bit around cervical screening in the uk, and you mentioned this in the introduction to the paper as well, that cervical screening really does have variable uptake rates and we know that there are some, some barriers to access. But can you talk us through these and tell us a bit about why you decided to do this research? Speaker B 00:01:07.940 - 00:03:41.440 So, as you've just really nicely summarised, cervical screening is really important weapon against cervical cancer. So we know that it prevents cervical cancer and since the introduction of the NHS Cervical Screening program in the UK, we've seen deaths from cervical cancer drop by around 70%. So we know that it's very effective. But in the uk, the number of people attending is declining year on year and currently, currently only around 68% of those people who are eligible for cervical screening actually attend. There are a whole range of different reasons for non attendance. These include things to do with the speculum examination, so having to have an intimate examination to be examined. The anticipated embarrassment or fear of pain related to that procedure, I think are important barriers. But there are also barriers associated with access to reaching screening appointments, taking time off work, having childcare and so on and so forth. So we thought that there was some really important barriers there that could potentially be addressed by self sampling. Now, vaginal self sampling is actually been incorporated in many cervical screening programs around the world. Some cervical screening programs are using it just for people who are non attenders or underscreened by traditional screening routes and other countries are using it as a choice for everybody. Now, in the uk, we haven't yet taken up vaginal self sampling sampling, but it will be introduced this year in 2026, principally for under screened groups. And there is some work looking at whether or not it will be introduced as a choice for everyone in the future. But we know from research that's been done in the UK that only around 12 to 13% of people who are offered vaginal self sampling who are under screened actually return a sample. And therefore it clearly doesn't address all the barriers to cervical screening. And we wondered whether a urine test would have more app. It would have the same benefits of vaginal self sampling in that it can be collected at home and posted to the laboratory. So it removes that need for an intimate examination. It removes the need for, you know, making an appointment at a healthcare facility to have your screen taken, but it perhaps, you know, removes some of the barriers towards putting a swab inside the vagina that might be culturally or religiously unacceptable to some groups. And so we thought that a urine self sample could be another option for people who currently aren't screened. And so we wanted to see how accurate it was in this study. Speaker A 00:03:42.320 - 00:04:03.760 And those issues around access are really important, especially in this population of women who are juggling lots of caring responsibilities with young children or caring for older relatives as well. So sometimes it is just difficult to get to an appointment and, you know, juggling work hours and things which often then coincide with GP opening hours as well. Speaker B 00:04:03.920 - 00:04:41.960 Yeah, absolutely. And we, we have seen a drop in people, you know, in the youngest age group of people who are invited for screening, attending SCRE, their rates of attendance are even lower than the 68% that I quoted. And probably a lot of that is to do with having very busy lives, not seeing this as a priority, imagining that you're not at risk and seeing cervical cancer as something that affects older people, perhaps. So there are additional barriers related to certain age groups. But I definitely think that making time for a screening appointment, juggling all the different millions of things that we have to do every day, is a really important barrier that something like a urine based test could help to overcome. Speaker A 00:04:42.120 - 00:05:10.680 Yeah, fair enough. So this was quite a big prospective study of over 1500 women carried out across the northwest of England. So women provided both regular speculum based cervical samples alongside urine sample too. And the main thing you were looking at here was the accuracy of the urine based HPV testing for cervical cancer. But just in case people aren't completely aware of all this, can you talk us through first why we're now only looking at HPV in these samples? Speaker B 00:05:11.060 - 00:06:30.230 Yeah. So, I mean, in 2019 in the UK, we changed from primary cytology based cervical screening to primary HPV based cervical screening. So that means that the sample taken from your cervix is tested first for hpv and only if that is HPV positive is it then looked at under the microscope. To see if there are changes in the cells. And this was based on a very large study done in the UK that showed that HPV testing is a much more sensitive test than cytology as the primary scre. And by that what we mean is it's much more likely not to miss abnormal cells than cytology, which is very effective when there is a large lesion, if you will, that can be sampled with a cervical swab, but not so good at picking up smaller lesions. And so there is the chance that cytology might miss an abnormality. But HPV is really good at showing that somebody is at risk. So we now do all primary screening by HPV testing. And of course this is what has opened up the opportunity for us to do different sample types. So a vaginal swab tested for HPV or a urine sample tested for hpv, you know, could also be an effective way of screening people to see if they are at high risk of cervical pre cancers. Speaker A 00:06:30.390 - 00:06:37.830 So talk us through the results. So how well did the urine based testing perform? So both in terms of how sensitive and specific the results were? Speaker B 00:06:38.130 - 00:09:24.670 Well, first of all, it's really important to say that this piece of work followed on from another piece of work that looked at a high risk population. And in that other piece of work we were able to show that it's really important how the urine sample is collected. So absolutely must be collected with a colipy device or a similar device that collects the first fraction of urine sampled. And that's important because the HPV isn't in the urine itself. The urine is flushing cervical mucus that is accumulated around the urethra into the sample. And so if you don't collect that very first flush of urine, then you're likely to miss the hpv. So on that background, using the COLIP device in this study and collecting that urine sample prior to the routine clinician obtained cervical sample, we were able to obtain two samples from each person that we were then able to test with the same HPV test. And we were able to compare absolutely how accurate the urine was compared to the matched cervical sample. And because we were using a general population, so this is anybody that's due cervical screening rather than a high risk population, we knew that we weren't going to see very many people who had CIN2 plus, which is the cervical pre cancer that we want to identify and treat. And actually what we were looking for here was to see, you know, what prevalence of HPV infections do we pick up using the two tests, you know, the urine test and the Cervical test and how well matched are they at terms of, you know, telling somebody that they're HPV...

    16 min

  4. 10 FEB

    Trust matters: A practice-level look at patient confidence in health professionals

    Today, we’re speaking to Professor Richard Baker, emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester. Title of paper: Factors influencing confidence and trust in health professionals: a cross-sectional study of English general practices. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0154 A transactional model of general practice is being introduced to improve access that involves triage and increasing percentages of appointments with professionals other than GPs or that are not face-to-face. Using summary data about almost all English general practices in 2023-24 with 750 or more patients, the patient-reported levels of confidence and trust from the General Practice Patient Survey were associated with increased percentages of appointments that were with GPs or were face-to-face, and with higher continuity, after adjusting for other practice and patient factors. Confidence and trust was lower in practices with fewer appointments per year per patient, fewer patients having their needs met, greater deprivation, fewer patients of White ethnicity, and in practices located in London, as compared to other regions of England. Access to general practice needs improving, but the findings of this cross-sectional study suggest that preserving features of relationship-based care is also needed to maintain patients’ trust and confidence in health professionals. Transcript This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions. Speaker A 00:00:01.200 - 00:00:46.980 Hello and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for joining us here to listen to this podcast today. In today's episode, we're speaking to Professor Richard Baker, Emeritus professor at the University of Leicester. We're here to talk about the paper that he and his colleagues have recently published here in the bjjp. The paper is titled Factors Influencing Confidence and Trust in Healthcare A Cross Sectional Study of English General Practices. So, hi, Richard, thanks for joining me here today and it's nice to see you again. Just before we talk about this paper, I wonder if you could just talk to me about trust and why you think it's important in general practice interactions. Speaker B 00:00:47.780 - 00:01:32.060 Well, it's difficult to have a consultation with a patient if they don't trust you. I mean, it's just very basic, a very basic level, very simple level. But there's lots of evidence as well that trust is important. People who trust you are more likely to follow your advice. They're more likely to take the medication. They're more likely therefore, to come back and see you again, more likely to use services appropriately in the future. And there's some evidence that the outcomes are better if there's trust there. Trust obviously should be earned. You can't take it for granted, you've got to be trustable. But it's obviously very important for clinical practice and essentially always has been, hasn't it, really? Going back to the. The Greek doctors, trust was important then, just as it is now. Speaker A 00:01:32.460 - 00:01:38.540 And you mentioned about different outcomes. So what sort of outcomes do we know could be associated with trust? Speaker B 00:01:39.180 - 00:02:07.990 Just use of services is one example. So you can get people who, if they don't trust who they see, they go and see someone else and again, and so they overuse services and that waste resources. On the other hand, you may get people who just won't come, so they'll delay presenting with the problems because they don't trust the provider to get it right. Then they risk of poor outcomes as a consequence of that. So it's a whole mixture of things. Speaker A 00:02:09.030 - 00:02:21.190 So what were you trying to do in the study? So you wanted to look at trust and how it impacted on patient outcomes, or was it more about sort of the predictors and associations with trust, isn't it? Speaker B 00:02:21.800 - 00:04:33.330 Yes, I think we were conscious that general practice has gone through a lot of change. The big changes came about during the pandemic as to how general practice is delivered, how people have their appointments and things have sort of Reverted a bit to how they were, but only partially in terms of who you get to see face to face, appointment and so on. And we were asking the question, well, what has been the consequence of this? Should we be thinking about confidence and trust in association with these changes? I mean, the changes may have been absolutely essential because we just don't have the capacity in general practice to do everything that we would like to do for an increasingly multi morbid population. But what are the consequences? How do we need to respond? How do we need to respond? Questions I guess for follow on from Is there a link between confidence and trust and these changes in general practice changes? I think when we looked at this, we've sort of grouped them, we sort of imagined that there are two models of general practice which the relationships based care and the transactional model. Of course there aren't two models, it's all mixed up. But to simplify it, you call it two different things. And we've tried to categorize or explain what relationship based care might be, which has typified by high context continuity, face to face appointments with someone, you know, usually a gp, to get generalist medical care. And then the transactional model where you, you have a problem, you, you phone up or email or whatever it might be online and you get allocated or triaged to a particular professional who deals with that particular problem and then off you go on to something else. And, and it could be face to face, it could be over the phone, it could be all sorts of different health professionals. So there's two different ways, it's all mixed up. And every practice offices offers these two approaches in different degrees. It's just. So this arbitrary division that we've described and we're sort of interested in how we look at that, how is competent trust linked to that? Speaker A 00:04:34.769 - 00:04:56.790 This was a study looking at the general practice patient survey, which includes a question about whether patients felt that they had confidence and trust in their healthcare professionals. And. And then as we were discussing, you looked at some of the factors that might influence this trust. But I wonder if you could talk us through the findings. So in this survey, how many respondents felt that they trusted their healthcare professionals? Speaker B 00:04:57.590 - 00:06:12.790 This was, we were interested and the question was, did you have complete confidence in trust in the professional scene at your last appointment? And around about the figure was 64, 65% on average across all the practices. So this was all general practices, but the vast majority of 99% or something of all general practices in England, 6200 practices were roughly in the study. And this was 20, 23, 24 year. It was a simple cross sectional study for reasons the data weren't available for a longitudinal study, unfortunately. But so there are inevitably limitations on that. But I suppose, yes, you would say two thirds had full confidence in trust and others had partial confidence trust and others had absolutely no competence and trust in the professional they had last seen. Now, this relates to all types of health professionals seen, so it would include gps, but it would include the nurse you saw, the physiotherapist or the pharmacist or whatever. It would be the general practice based pharmacist, the people in the primary care team who, who consult with them see patients. Speaker A 00:06:12.870 - 00:06:38.150 And you talked earlier about these two different models of care, the relationship based model and the transactional model. And you know, you described that some of this might be a bit more mixed in practice, but did you find any associations between those different ways of working and how trust was or how much patients trusted their interactions with their last healthcare professional? Speaker B 00:06:39.610 - 00:07:53.140 There's a tendency among the findings for relationship based care to be associated with higher levels of competence and trust, relationship based care being typified by higher levels of continuity, more face to face appointments, more appointments with gps. And of those three things, continuity is perhaps the most powerful association and then points with GPS the next most powerful. And face to face being the third or least powerful element of that three. When you put all three together, I think it becomes quite a powerful message really saying patients do by and large tend to be more trusting, have more confidence in relationship based care. But that doesn't mean to say there are patients who don't want transactional care and have trust and confidence in it, they get it and when they want it. So it's not a simple either...

    17 min

  5. 3 FEB

    Belonging, autonomy and burnout: Why GPs leave

    Today, we’re speaking to Dr Laura Jefferson, Senior Research Fellow based at the University of Manchester. We’re here to discuss her paper recently published here in the BJGP titled, ‘Understanding persistent GP turnover using work and personal characteristics: a retrospective observational study’. Title of paper: Understanding persistent GP turnover using work and personal characteristics: a retrospective observational study DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0260 GP turnover rates from national administrative datasets have previously been used to explore practice-level factors associated with turnover and its relationship to patient. outcomes. The individual and work characteristics associated with turnover is less well understood, with much research focusing on intentions to leave or smaller samples of GPs leaving practice. This study sought to fill this research gap, through analysis of a large dataset of GPs working experiences linked to turnover, understanding potential predictors that may offer solutions to the workforce crisis being faced in general practice. We find that GPs’ sense of autonomy, belonging and competence are significantly lower in practices with problems with persistent turnover and demonstrate how satisfaction with work characteristics such as working hours and experiences of strained relationships differs in practices with persistent turnover. Transcript This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions. Speaker A 00:00:00.880 - 00:00:53.050 Hello and welcome to BJGP Interviews. My name is Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the bjgp. Thanks for joining us here to listen to this podcast today. In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Laura Jefferson, who is a senior research fellow based at the University of Manchester. We're here to discuss her paper, recently published here in the journal, titled Understanding Persistent GP Turnover Using Work and Personal A Retrospective Observational Study. So, hi, Laura, it's really nice to see you again and to talk about this research and I suppose I really just wanted to frame our discussion here today by saying that there's been a lot of talk recently about the retention crisis in UK general practice, but I wonder, could you just talk us through how big is the scale of the problem that we're dealing with here? Speaker B 00:00:53.370 - 00:02:12.110 Yeah, thank you. Yeah, well, thank you for inviting me to talk to you today as well. I think it's interesting, we hear a lot of discussion in the media and in our research evidence as well, recently about an increase in GP turnover. In the past sort of decade, there's been a gradual increase, so that's in terms of GPs leaving medicine, but also moving across practices. And it's good to see a kind of change in policy focus from historically, a lot of policies focused on recruitment of GPS. So, you know, we've had like, pledges to have 6,000 GPS that have not been met and it's often kind of criticized as filling a leaky bucket. So if we try and obviously pay a lot. So I think it's approximately half a million pounds to train a gp, but actually to replace the GP is really expensive as well. So it's about £300,000 to replace the GP. And so, yeah, so there's a positive focus to thinking about retention, but actually it's about how can we do that effectively and understanding that the sort of one size fits all approach doesn't necessarily work and that there's different gps with different needs. Speaker A 00:02:12.590 - 00:02:36.830 And this was a study where you were looking at the association between high practice turnover of GPs and GP job satisfaction. And what you did was you linked data from different general practice practices and GP workforce surveys. But the first thing I wanted to really look into was that you identified these high turnover practices. What exactly did this mean? Speaker B 00:02:37.070 - 00:04:33.190 Yeah, so there's been previous research that's done this before, so it's using. We're really fortunate in the UK that we've got really good workforce data compared to a lot of other countries. So we have longitudinal data going back a long way that we can use for research purposes to try and understand more about these trends. So colleagues of mine at Manchester have previously used this data from NHS Digital, which is now NHS England, linking with data on gps by General Practice, which is has got data on their kind of start and leave dates in a practice. And that allows us to track where gps are moving out of a practice and how long they've stayed there for. So they've previously looked at sort of persistent turnover as being categorized as a practice where they have consistently, for three years running, had a 10% turnover of GPS. So this is where it seems to be a more worrying turnover figure. I think it's expected that there's going to be some level of turnover and some level of turnover that might be a useful thing. But those kind of practices where you think, oh, what's going on there? And particularly then within our research, looking at what are the striking differences in those practices, both in terms of the sort of workplace characteristics that GPs are experiencing? So can we use that data to explore strategies that could be used to actually support gps in those practices? So trying to understand, really, what does it feel like for a GP in these practices with persistent turnover, so that then, hopefully, through this sort of research, is kind of like the first step in a puzzle to try and determine strategies to support them. Speaker A 00:04:33.750 - 00:04:50.310 Yeah, fair enough. And then thinking a bit more about what you found here. So you looked, as you said, at some of the characteristics of the GPs who worked in these high turnover practices, and you found some really interesting differences that related to gender, age and experience. So can you talk us through that? Speaker B 00:04:50.390 - 00:06:45.570 Yeah. So this was the first time that these large data sets have been used to look at GP characteristics that might not necessarily predict turnover, but might be associated with turnover. So difficult to make predictions using the approaches that we've used, but we were able to, within our analysis, adjust for things like age, experience, gender, looking at GP partners and salaried GPs to try and draw out, are there any differences? And we did find a gender difference. So women were more likely to be in practices with persistent high turnover. But because of the analytical approach that we've used, it's really difficult for us to unpick. What does that actually mean? Does that mean that are they driving turnover or do they actually become stuck in these practices? So there's a lot of research literature that suggests that women may be less mobile in the workplace for a number of societal reasons. So it could be that that's a factor explaining the gender difference that we found. But this is a really important first step for us to then develop the strateg thinking about what different groups need. Only included a smaller proportion of salaried GPs, so we weren't able to look so well at partners versus salaried. And also looking at ethnic diversity and variations, particularly important given that there's a large proportion of international medical graduates now as GP registrars. So this is a kind of first step and there's going to be future research, which we've been commissioned now to do this research in a larger sample of gps, looking at a longer time frame as well, which will be really nice to be able to look after. Covid. Speaker A 00:06:45.890 - 00:07:02.130 Brilliant. That sounds really exciting. And I think what's really interesting here is how satisfied GPs were with different aspects of their work. What did the gps rate as low satisfaction in their job role and how did this impact on turnover? Speaker B 00:07:02.550 - 00:09:38.570 Yeah, so what we did is we used a theoretical framework to guide our analysis. So within the Work Life Survey, there's a number of different kind of components that gps can rate in terms of their satisfaction with their working lives. But that would be quite a messy analysis. So to try and break this down, we used the ABC of Doctors Needs, which is a framework which talks about the importance of autonomy, belonging and competence for doctors to feel that they're happy and well within their work and that impacts on retention. So, yeah, so we looked at those components and within each of those we used questions from the survey that spoke to those theoretical domains. So, for example, autonomy looked at sort of, there was an item around freedom to choose the methods that they're working with. Also items around paperwork, variety of work and hours of work, belonging looked at particularly around sort of relationships and feeling connected to and valued in the workplace. There's questions in the survey about strained relationships at work and also about recognition, so feeling like they're valued for delivering a good job. And then the third domain that we created around...

    15 min

  6. 27 JAN

    BJGP Top 10 research most read and published in 2025

    This episode, we have a round table discussion with the editorial team of Sam Merriel, Tom Round and Nada Khan. This collection of the BJGP’s top 10 research most read and published in 2025 brings together high-profile primary care research and clinical innovation. And here are the top 10 most read papers of 2025: 10 Adoption of clinical pharmacist roles in primary care: longitudinal evidence from English general practice https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0320 9 Factors affecting prostate cancer detection through asymptomatic prostate-specific antigen testing in primary care in England: evidence from the 2018 National Cancer Diagnosis Audit https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0376 8 Paramedic or GP consultations in primary care: prospective study comparing costs and outcomes https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0469 7 What patients want from access to UK general practice: systematic review https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0582 6 Technostress, technosuffering, and relational strain: a multi-method qualitative study of how remote and digital work affects staff in UK general practice https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0322 5 Antidepressants and risk of postural hypotension: a self-controlled case series study in UK primary care https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0429 4 Challenges to quality in contemporary, hybrid general practice a multi-site longitudinal case study https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0184 3 Low-dose amitriptyline for irritable bowel syndrome: a qualitative study of patients’ and GPs’ views and experiences https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0303 2 Artificial intelligence for early detection of lung cancer in GPs’ clinical notes: a retrospective observational cohort study https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2023.0489 1 Effectiveness of low-dose amitriptyline and mirtazapine in patients with insomnia disorder and sleep maintenance problems: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in general practice (DREAMING) https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0173 Transcript This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions. Speaker A 00:00:00.480 - 00:01:27.500 Hello and welcome to the BJGP Top 10 podcast. So this is where we take a closer look at the most read research papers in the BJGP in 2025 and just have a discussion about what they mean for day to day general practice. I'm Nada Khan, one of the associate editors of the Journal. And in today's episode we'll be exploring some of the themes that really captured attention with the readership, I suppose. And we'll be talking about things like consultation compl complexity and workload pressures. Some work around diagnostic uncertainty and how to look, look after people with multimorbidity. And I think we're going to have a discussion a bit more, not just about what these papers found, but maybe a bit about why they resonated and maybe give a bit of editorial feedback around that. And because it's a conversation here between three clinicians as well. And I'll go around and introduce everyone in a minute, maybe a bit about what they add to the conversations we're already already having in practice and where the gaps still are. And I guess with that we'll be keeping it grounded in the messy reality of today's general practice as well. So I've introduced myself and I'm joined here by Tom Round and Sam Merrill, who are both also associate editors of the bjgp. But I'll go to Tom first. So, yeah, tell us a bit about who you are and how is your day going? Speaker B 00:01:27.720 - 00:01:59.550 Great, Nada. Thanks for having me. So, Dr. Tom Rand, I'm a GP in northeast London and an academic clinical lecturer at King's College, interested in early disease and cancer detection and also health inequality. So, yeah, pretty good. Like everyone, I've got a mild cold at the moment. I think exactly the same last year when we did this podcast, winter cold season. So I think we're all sort of feeling that a little bit in primary care with flus and other things and staff, you know, so otherwise good. Looking forward to having really interesting discussion about these papers which are really fascinating and give a real broad breadth of what we do in general practice. Speaker A 00:02:00.420 - 00:02:07.940 Great. And Sam, we'll go to you and you have some really exciting news in the background as well. So, yeah, tell us about who you are and what you're up to today. Speaker C 00:02:08.180 - 00:02:31.770 Thanks, Nad. I think, yeah, you're alluding to the fact I'm on Puppy alert because our new addition to the family in the winter is keeping us busy and making remote working a challenge. But we're getting through. But yeah, lovely to be with you guys. And I catch up and BJGP and wider podcast audience. So, yes, I'm a GP working in the Northwest of England and a clinical senior lecture at the University of Manchester. Speaker A 00:02:32.650 - 00:04:28.830 Brilliant. Okay, so let's get into the top 10 most read research and published papers of 2025 and I'm going to kick off with number 10 and number 8, just because they're on a sort of related topic. So number 10 is by Michael Anderson and colleagues. Michael's based in Manchester and at lse. And this paper looks at prescribing, quality in practices and the role of clinical pharmacists as. And I'll just point out that I'll put links to all the papers in the show notes as well. So this paper looks at the adoption of clinical pharmacist roles in English general practice and asks that question of does bringing pharmacists into the primary care workforce actually lead to improvements? Michael looked at this through a longitudinal approach. They used national practice level data from 2015 to 2019 and just looked at practices that didn't, didn't have a clinical pharmacist role. And it's really interesting, the results actually. So, not surprisingly, the proportion of practices with a clinical pharmacist increased from about 3% to over 20% over the course of the study. And the, the team found some really significant improvements across several prescribing indicators. So things like reductions in total medication costs, better opioid prescribing and prescribing for anxiety meds after pharmacists were implemented in pract, I guess, really it would be interesting to hear your thoughts, Sam and Tom, about what do you think really are the outcomes we want most from clinical pharmacists? And how do you think we should interpret these modest changes at scale? Because there's a lot else going on in terms of workforce that we need to think about in general practice, like access and continuity and not just meds optimization. Speaker C 00:04:29.310 - 00:05:41.170 I can talk from practice experience because our clinical pharmacist just left for Canada just in the last month or so. But yeah, it was really interesting, like having him part of the team. I think in a lot of ways he took a lot of burden off the gps in terms of meds monitoring, meds management, medication reviews. He builds a lot of continuity with a lot of patients because he was doing a lot of checking in. So in a lot of ways he was quite invaluable member of the team and we have sought a replacement since. At the same time, you know, there was some, some extra challenges in terms of workload and stuff, because obviously pharmacists have different training and the role of a clinical pharmacist in general practice is relatively new. So, you know, their approaches to prescribing and, you know, how close you stick to guidelines and how much you adapt for individual patient situations is slightly different. So. Yeah, but I think that was part of sort of feeling a way out with the role. But it's really noticeable when he's not around because it does affect how the workload flows and how the practice runs and how the patients, you know, interact with the practice. So, yeah, it's been really interesting at the local level. But, yeah, Michael's study also...

    40 min

  7. 20 JAN

    Safety incidents in prison healthcare: Lessons from critical illness

    Today, we’re speaking to Dr Joy McFadzean,a GP in Swansea and Clinical Lecturer of Patient Safety based at Cardiff University. We’re here to talk about the paper she’s recently published here in the BJGP alongside her colleagues titled, ‘Critical illness in prisons: a multi-method analysis of reported healthcare safety incidents in England’. Title of paper: Critical illness in prisons: a multi-method analysis of reported healthcare safety incidents in England Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0239 Using a mixed-methods descriptive and framework analysis, this paper provides new insights into the complexity of care delivery in prisons. Results resonate with and strengthen the recommendations from recent investigations into prison healthcare by further developing an understanding of the complex intersecting factors contributing to safety incidents and quality issues in care delivery. The fundamental importance of good quality and adequately resourced primary care delivery in prisons has been highlighted. It also identifies system-wide interventions that are needed to improve care delivery, and which are likely to interest policy-makers and scrutiny bodies, commissioners and teams working in prisons to inform developments in strategic health needs assessments, workforce profiling, and training requirements for healthcare and prison teams. Funding This study/project is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Policy Research Programme (PR-R20-0318-21001). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The funders of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, writing of the manuscript or the decision to submit. Transcript This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions. Speaker A 00:00:00.560 - 00:01:10.200 Hello and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the associate editors of the bjgp. Welcome back to the first season of the BJGP podcast here in 2026. And we're starting off this season of the podcast with a chat with Dr. Joy McFadyn. Joy is a GP based in Swansea and clinical lecturer of Patient safety based at Cardiff University. We're here to talk about the paper she's recently published here in the BJGP alongside her colleagues. The paper is titled Critical Illness in Prisons A Multi Method Analysis of Reported Healthcare Safety Incidents in England. So, hi, Joy, it's really lovely to meet you and to talk about this research, but yeah, just taking a step back, I think it's fair to say that the prison population is an underserved and probably fairly under researched population as well. But you point out here in the paper that it's not only this, but that the prison population is actually at a much higher risk of early mortality as well. So can you talk us through this at all? Speaker B 00:01:10.680 - 00:02:31.010 Yeah, that's a really good point. So we know that people who reside in prison, known as prisoners, will have very high rates of physical and mental health needs. And as you say, there are concerns that they have rates of premature mortality, so they may die up to 20 years earlier than the rest of the population. But they are a population which isn't necessarily the area of focus. So even though we know the importance of supporting their healthcare as a public health concern, they are often underserved, they're quite vulnerable, and yet there hasn't been enough research to support them to have what we call equivalent health outcomes. So there are lots of definitions of what is considered to be equivalence of care for people in prisons. So the Royal College of General Practitioners Secure Environments Group, they have defined what equivalence of care is for people in prisons, thinking that they should have the same quality of care, the same level of staffing, the same resources as anyone who is residing in the community in order to get the same health outcome. And currently that is not being realised. Speaker A 00:02:31.330 - 00:02:38.210 And just as a background to all this work, how many of these early deaths do you think are preventable? Speaker B 00:02:38.930 - 00:03:39.270 So we carried out a study which was called the Avoidable Harm in Prison Study. So it was focusing very much on healthcare events where people were harmed or could have been harmed whilst they reside in prisons. So our focus is very much on these patient safety incidents, reports and incidents themselves, and ultimately the findings of the other space of the study. We haven't released yet they're still embargoed. But we were seeing within our sample of patient safety incident reports, events where prisoners were undertaking significant harm. So within our paper, we haven't seen any evidence of the deaths which could be considered to be avoidable. But our focus was very much on events where without urgent treatment, there was a high risk of death. And we considered many of those events to be avoidable. Speaker A 00:03:39.590 - 00:04:10.690 And I guess all this is tied into what you're aiming to do here in this research, which was to look at and characterize patient safety incidents in the prison population and find opportunities to improve care. So you used a really detailed approach here and looked at patient safety incidents reported in England and carefully examined and coded all of the incidents here. But I really want us to talk through what you found, what were the main sorts of incident type. And what I'm trying to get at is what really happened in these reports. Speaker B 00:04:11.410 - 00:07:08.750 Yeah, thank you. So we reviewed Originally up to 4,000 of those patient safety incident reports. And then when we focused specifically on those events where someone was at very high risk of death if they hadn't received treatment, we were looking at conditions suggestive of heart attacks, strokes, status epilepticus, diabetic ketoacidosis, for example. And what we saw is that most of the reports that were included for analysis, so about 100 of those reports, people in prison were not being able to access healthcare professionals when they needed to. So in prisons, people will have an assessment when they arrive to the prison, which is an assessment of their healthcare needs. They should also have access to nursing staff, GPS and allied healthcare professionals, as well as referrals to secondary care as needed. And what we were seeing is that when there are events where someone was critically unwell, they couldn't access the staffing when they required. So it's very much a nurse led service in the prisons. And even when there were prisoners who had collapsed, nursing staff could not access the prisoners. And that was for lots of different reasons. Some of it was related to poor communication, that there's quite a reliance on the use of radios in our reports. And so if people were trying to radio from one area of the prison to the healthcare teams, then there was too much radio traffic that their messages weren't getting through or they were using the wrong emergency codes. So actually the nursing staff weren't aware of the urgency of when they needed to get there. So there were lots of delays in actually having the healthcare teams arrive and assess the patients themselves. But also when a decision was made that someone needed to be conveyed to an emergency department, for example, due to difficulties with staffing levels, there weren't sufficient prison officer numbers to escort them from the prison to hospital. So there was significant delays. So what we could see in some of the events is that someone had collapsed. There was concern that this was suggestive of a stroke, they were dysphasic, they had facial palsy, they had tinnitus, headaches, et cetera. And nursing staff had assessed, said, no, they're unwell. Gps had said they need to be conveyed to the hospital and they weren't transferred until the following day. So those types of delays were very evident as well. So difficulty accessing the healthcare professionals in the first place and then a delay getting the correct treatment or management, even with conditions which are time critical. Speaker A 00:07:09.630 - 00:07:29.500 That all sounds really shocking, actually. But I wonder if we could just take a step back and, and could you describe to us what healthcare provision is like generally in prisons? You mentioned about a nurse led care system, but how easy is it to access other healthcare professionals like GPs in prisons generally? Speaker B 00:07:30.700 - 00:11:02.620 So I think there are two very different opinions in this. So we have the access to the patient safety incident reports, which is telling us that it's very difficult for them to access healthcare professionals as needed within the prisons that we looked at for the avoidable harm in prison study, for example, we were only focusing on prisons where health care was delivered on site and the...

    21 min

  8. 11/11/2025

    Faecal calprotectin in the over-50s: Rule-out test or red flag?

    Today, we’re speaking to Dr Rob Perry, who is a Gastroenterology Clinical Research Fellow based at Imperial College London. Title of paper: Evaluating the Role of Faecal Calprotectin in Older Adults Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0169 There is considerable uncertainty surrounding the use of FC as a diagnostic test in older adults, with varying suggestions in guidelines and a lack of data in the wider literature. This study investigates the performance of FC in older adults (≥50 years), compared to a younger cohort, with a view to guide its correct use in a primary care setting. These data suggest that FC is a sensitive test for IBD and organic gastrointestinal pathology in both groups. However, concerns remain over its PPV and specificity, particularly in older adults, and it should not be used if colorectal cancer is suspected. Transcript This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions. Speaker A 00:00:00.880 - 00:00:49.180 Hello and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate Editors of the bjgp. Thanks for taking the time today to listen to this podcast. Today we're speaking to Dr. Rob Perry, who is a gastroenterology Clinical Research Fellow based at Imperial College London. We're here to talk about the paper he's recently published here in the BJGP titled Evaluating the Role of Fecal Calprotectin in Older Adults. So thanks, Rob, for joining me here to talk about your work. And I guess I just really want to preface this by saying that a lot has changed in the last few years just in terms of testing for inflammatory bowel disease and bowel cancer in general practice. But I wonder if you could just talk us through this, some of the different guidelines and why you wanted to do this study. Speaker B 00:00:49.660 - 00:02:24.450 Oh, yes, thank you for having me. Firstly, and the rationale for the study is that, you know, consultations for gastrointestinal symptoms make up a large number of consultations in primary care. I think the figures around 10%. And whilst fecal cow protection is an increasingly well established test for differentiating between inflammatory bowel disease and functional or other gastrointestinal or non inflammatory gastrointestinal diseases, its role in older adults is far less well established. With varying guidelines for clinicians in primary care, the NICE guidelines make no specific mention, for example, of age, other than that calprotectin should not be used where age is considered a risk factor in the context of certain symptoms. For suspicion of cancer, the BSG guidelines on IBD use a cutoff of 40, above which they suggest calprotectin is not used. The something called the NICE York Fecal cow protectant care pathway suggests an age cut above 60, which is a NICE endorsed pathway. So there's some uncertainty there in the literature about which cutoff should be used for fecal cow protectin. And the reason any cutoff is suggested is because data has previously shown that calprotectin lacks sensitivity for diagnosing colorectal cancer. And as age is considered a risk factor for colorectal cancer, guidelines normally mandate earlier endoscopic evaluation of patients with GI symptoms in older age groups. Speaker A 00:02:24.530 - 00:02:39.170 And can you just talk us through briefly what you did here? So you looked at patients referred for a colonoscopy at one single centre, so at Imperial College Healthcare Trust. But just talk us through briefly who was included in the study and what were you looking at specifically? Speaker B 00:02:40.380 - 00:04:04.090 So looking at patients where calprotectin was being used for diagnostic purposes, so calprotectin is also, as you probably know, well established for monitoring patients with existing ibd, monitoring response to treatment for flares, et cetera. We were just looking at patients where it was being used for diagnostic purposes. So any patients with existing IBD were excluded from the study. And then, yes, as you said, anyone who had a calprotectin within a six month period back in 2021, who then subsequently within a one year period had a colonoscopy performed at Imperial, which is the local referral centre, that were included in the study. And we only looked at adult patients. We had a cohort of older adults which we used to cut 50 and above, and a younger cohort below that. We didn't look at pediatric cases, that was how we selected patients. And then we reviewed available electronic documentation to ascertain the diagnosis of the patient, looking at clinic betters etc, as well as looking at other tests that patients may have had performed when their symptoms are being evaluated. Fit testing, for example. We also looked at CRP and haemoglobin. By collecting that data, we were able to ascertain the diagnostic performance of chiroprotectin in the two respective cohorts. And also in comparison with some of the other clinical tests that I mentioned. Speaker A 00:04:04.710 - 00:04:21.670 Yeah. And as you point out, because these tests might be used in quite a varied fashion depending on patient age or presentation, I suppose it's important to kind of work out what the diagnostic capabilities of them are. And I think that's what this study really aimed to achieve. Really. Speaker B 00:04:22.630 - 00:05:04.510 Yes, exactly. So we were trying to look at how calprotectin performed in the older age group compared to the younger age group, and also looking at how its performance relative to fit testing in those two cohorts. We looked at the performance of calprotectin, the differentiating between inflammatory bowel disease and non organic GI pathology. And we also looked at its ability to differentiate between organic GI pathology more generally. So inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer and other significant GI diagnoses and non organic pathology. Those two questions, which I think are important questions when considering patients presenting with GI symptoms in primary care. Speaker A 00:05:05.710 - 00:05:14.190 And just talk us through what you found here. And I think the results were really striking in terms of things were different according to age and maybe not surprisingly. But talk us through that. Speaker B 00:05:15.550 - 00:07:19.810 I think the key findings are firstly that calprotectin remains a sensitive test in both groups. So sensitivity when using a cutoff of 50 micrograms per gram, which is the nice advised cutoff for considering a positive calprotectin Test suggested by nice. There are other, you know, there is other data in the literature about altering the cutoff which calprotectin is considered positive, but 50 is the cut, you know, is one of the cut offs we looked at and is what is suggested by, in the NICE guidelines using that cutoff, you get sensitivities of over 90% for diagnosing IBD from non organic GI pathology in both age groups. What you see in the older age group is a significantly lower positive predictive value. So positive predictive value of only about 12%. And using that cutoff in the patients who had, again using that cutoff of 50 in the small number of patients who did have colorectal cancer, if you then did try to push up the threshold at which calprotectin is considered positive, as many guidelines do suggest, you would then start to, to miss cases of colorectal cancer, which just highlights one of the important messages of the paper and that is clearly documented in the NICE guidelines that calprotectin shouldn't be used as a biomarker for cancer and if cancer is suspected, patients should be referred on the appropriate urgently suspected cancer pathway. We also found that calprotectin did perform better than fit tests for diagnosing ibd. But, but there's also potentially some future work to be done in patients who may have had FIT testing because of concern over potential colorectal cancer. But in patients where FIT is negative, calprotectin may then have a role as a good rule out test in that group where you've already ruled out suspected cancer. So that's maybe an area for future work and maybe it just helps to allow us to think about how we may have a more kind of joined up pathway for evaluating patients with lower GI symptoms in primary care. Speaker A 00:07:20.930 - 00:07:30.290 And I know some local guidelines might suggest faecal calprotectin alongside FIT in younger age groups. What are your thoughts about this based on the results of this work? Speaker B 00:07:30.930 - 00:08:26.550 I think it depends what symptoms the patient's presenting with. I think if patients present with symptoms that according to the NICE guideline that's potentially suggestive of colorectal cancer, then obviously they should be evaluated, you know, appropriately with FIT testing or, you know, onward referral. And I think, you know, I think calprotectin clearly has a role in younger patients for differentiating between non organic GI diseases and ibd. I think in older patients it's, you...

    15 min
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About

Listen to BJGP Interviews for the latest updates on primary care and general practice research. Hear from researchers and clinicians who will update and guide you to the best practice. We all want to deliver better care to patients and improve health through better research and its translation into practice and policy. The BJGP is a leading international journal of primary care with the aim to serve the primary care community. Whether you are a general practitioner or a nurse, a researcher, we publish a full range of research studies from RCTs to the best qualitative literature on primary care. In addition, we publish editorials, articles on the clinical practice, and in-depth analysis of the topics that matter. We are inclusive and determined to serve the primary care community. BJGP Interviews brings all these articles to you through conversations with world-leading experts. The BJGP is the journal of the UK's Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). The RCGP grant full editorial independence to the BJGP and the views published in the BJGP do not necessarily represent those of the College. For all the latest research, editorials and clinical practice articles visit BJGP.org (https://www.bjgp.org). If you want all the podcast shownotes plus the latest comment and opinion on primary care and general practice then visit BJGP Life (https://www.bjgplife.com).

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    The British Journal of General Practice
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
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    © Copyright 2026 The British Journal of General Practice
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