GP SCHOLARSHIP: THE WISE GP PROGRAMME

Championing and cultivating the Pragmatic Wisdom and Clinical Scholarship at the heart of modern General Practice

Royal College of General Practitioners

Because EXCELLENT General Practice needs not only gold standard evidence, but also  GOLD STANDARD WISDOM so as to deliver the highest standards of person-centred healthcare.

 

The WiseGP map provides an overview of all the centres of scholarship in the British Isles.

 

Wise GP Update August 2023

At WiseGP we recognise that more of the same won’t fix general practice.

We are working to champion the distinct expert generalist skills of GPs. Our resources aim to support WiseGPs to drive the changes needed to reclaim professional control of front-line general practice.

Here’s an update on where the idea for WiseGP arose, what resources we have for you to explore and how you can get involved…

The origins of WiseGP

WiseGP is a partnership between the Society for Academic Primary Care and the Royal College of General Practitioners and is sponsored by Hull York Medical School.

The idea for WiseGP first emerged from workshop conversations at the RCGP conference, in 2017. People in the room described the complexity of our everyday work, that doesn’t just rely on what we know, but how we use and apply our knowledge to deliver tailored healthcare. These knowledge work skills enable us to solve complex problems and are integral to our everyday work with patients, and support our work in wider leadership, teaching and research roles. People at the workshop reflected how this complex work isn’t adequately supported or recognised within our jobs.

Recognising these gaps led to Professor Joanne Reeve establishing WiseGP, to promote, advance and sustain the knowledge work needed for everyday primary care practice. She has since led the WiseGP project. In 2021, supported by the School for Primary Care Research and Health Education England Yorkshire, she welcomed a team of WiseGP Fellows, one of whom, Dr Annabelle Machin, continues to work on the project to promote WiseGP and develop its resources. ​

WiseGP Resources

WiseGP have created a range of resources to support GPs…

  • Our newsletter focuses on current challenges in everyday practice, from burnout to climate change, highlighting how a WiseGP approach could help you to address these.
  • Our GEM library contains headline messages from recent research with suggested WiseGP actions you could take.
  • We have stories to inspire you from WiseGPs discussing their career paths, to Wise General Practices sharing ideas for change they have applied in practice.
  • The WISDOM course is a further resource you can access for free online, to help develop your knowledge work skills in practice and beyond.

You can explore our WiseGP resources on our website, where you can also sign up to our newsletter: https://www.wisegp.co.uk/wisegp-resources

Contributing to WiseGP

At WiseGP we have been delighted to see our growing community. After receiving several requests to advertise for primary care research study participants, we are now trialling a dedicated page on our website, ‘Contribute to Primary Care Research’, alongside a page on how you can contribute to our WiseGP community.

​Contribute to Primary Care Research

If you’re a primary care clinician interested in taking part in research, here are some projects that are currently looking for participants: https://www.wisegp.co.uk/primary-care-research

If you would like to advertise your study, please get in touch.

WiseGP Community

If WiseGP has inspired you to make positive changes in your everyday practice, we’d love to hear from you!

Perhaps you have research you’d like to feature in our GEM library?

Have an idea for a future newsletter that you’d like us to focus on?

Maybe you have been inspired to make changes in your everyday practice that you’d like to share in a blog or Wise General Practice story?

Please get in touch!

 

Contact email: wisegpcouk@gmail.com

Twitter: @wisegpcouk

Website: www.wisegp.co.uk

 

WiseGP has a workshop at the RCGP conference this year- we hope you can join us there to continue the wise conversation!

 

Three things you need to know about the WISE GP programme

  • OUR GOAL: is to support excellent person-centred primary healthcare through supporting and inspiring GPs, clinicians and patients 

  • WHAT WE'RE DOING: producing a set of resources to champion & cultivate Clinical Scholarship within General Practice. Which includes: a Shining a Light resource pack (helping us all to champion scholarship), the Skills Academy (helping us all to cultivate the skills of scholarship), and support for Collective Wisdom (mentoring of individuals and building Communities of Action)

  • HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED: by contacting Joanne Reeve, GP Scholarship lead. You can also follow us on Twitter for regular updates - @TheWiseGP1

Why do we need the Wise GP programme?

  • To help GPs work in a different way: feeling confident to tailor care to the complex needs of modern patients; and able to lead practice teams and communities in redesigning healthcare for 21st century needs
  • To excite people about a career in General Practice: in recognising the intellectual stimulation of the role, and build sustainable career paths including portfolio careers
  • To support a re-imagination of the medical generalist role that is core to the work of the GP: the distinct intellectual task of the medical generalist in using clinical scholarship to generate robust knowledge-in-practice-in-context

And so deliver sustained and sustainble person-centred primary care.

 

What are SAPC and RCGP doing to champion GP scholarship?

Our work complements and builds on the foundations of General Practice professional training and practice described within RCGP curricula, Health Education England, the Clinical Research Networks, the combined UK medical schools (including SAPC) and others. Which recognises that every GP must be skilled and confident in the professional generation and use of ‘knowledge-in-practice-in-context'.

However both our research and consultation with current GPs, trainers, trainees and students has revealed key gaps which need to be filled to promote a vision and practice of The Wise GP. We need:

  • A NEW STORY of General Practice: to Shine a Light on the intellectual excitement and challenge of general practice – Championing the Clinical Scholarship of generalist practice and the pragmatic wisdom of working professionals 

We are developing resources to shine a light on: PEOPLE (working GPs using schoalrship in their daily practice) and PRACTICE (the evidence/knowledge being produced by GP and primary care scholarship. We will be launching GEMs (General practice Evidence for Modern practice)

  • Supporting NEW SKILLS for General Practice: developing a new Skills Academy to cultivate the skills of, and confidence in, extended professional practice.

Resources in development include: new training programmes, signposting to existing training programmes, Departmental Ambassadors to help you link with your local academic group, and an Advisors List of topic specific experts

  • Supporting  General Practice TEAMS – building Communities of Action and networks of support for scholarly activity

Resources in development: Profiling existing networks – learning from what was gone before; Supporting new networks – mentorship for new networks

 

Find out more...

Please contact Joanne Reeve if you have comments, queries or suggestions for this work

There's a great introduction to our work described in this blog by Domhnall MacAuley, Associate Editor of the Candian Medical Association Journal, by watching this short video pubished by CMAJ. And some more details on the background in the section below.

 

Who is involved developing and delivering the GP Scholarship Programme?

The Society for Academic Primary Care Exec (lead: Joanne Reeve) in partnership with the Royal College of GPs (leads: Martin Marshall, Ali Marsh, Pritesh Mistry - Innovation Research Board).

UK groups involved with and supporting this work: SAPC Heads of Teaching, SAPC Heads of Departments, group NIHR CRN Primary Care (Phil Evans). SAPC has provided £5k sponsorship for this work.

We have discussed the work with UK and international partners including: the Dept of Family Medicine at the University of Toronto, MacMaster University, WONCA Asia Pacific 2019 conference, the Royal College of Vet Surgeons, and the NAPCRG Special Interest Group on Advancing Generalist Expertise

With thanks also to all the individuals involved with and supporting this work to date:  Kevin Anderson, Umesh Chauhan, Adam Firth, Kamilla Hawthorn, Ben Jackson, Sabena Jameel,  Sara McKelvie, Jonathan Mills ,  Faraz Mughal, Ebrahim Mulla, Emma Parry, Jo Protheroe, Imran Rafi, Joe Rosenthal, Helen Stokes-Lampard, Val Wass, Sam Meriel, Polly Duncan..

The Building Blocks

The GP Scholarship work builds on earlier SAPC work including Jane Roberts work on supporting GPs with Exended Roles, and Greg Irving's work on supporting Academic Clinical Fellows.

Collective professional wisdom is an integral part of Academic Primary Care: the distinct body of work and knowledge that defines, develops and delivers the person-centred model/system of healthcare that is primary care. We need strong Academic Primary Care, now more than ever, if we are to achieve the effective, efficient, equitable health care that the best models of primary care can deliver. The strength of our discipline comes from bringing together Primary Care clinicians, including GPs, and Primary Health Care Scientists in a shared goal of championing excellence in primary care scholarship driving improvements in primary care provision.