SAPC exists to support, promote and develop the discipline of academic primary care.
This unique discipline brings together teachers, researchers, and practitioners from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to promote excellence in the development, delivery and evaluation of primary care policy and practice.
The Society’s work is underpinned by 3 key principles:
- PROMOTING excellent teaching, research, and critical reflection on primary care practice and policy;
- VALUING a distinctive primary care approach
- Recognising the importance of a MULTIDISCIPLINARY membership to achieve our goals.
What is primary care
Primary care refers to a complex set of ideas about how we understand, deliver, experience, and value health and health care.
Primary Care refers to a way health care is organised: being a multidimensional system of care shaped by financial, governance and workforce arrangements; facilitating coordinated and continuous access to a wide range of services; seeking to contribute to the equitable distribution of health in the population through efficient application of resources.
Primary care refers to the experience of care for individuals: being the first point of contact for people with health services; providing accessible, comprehensive, and continuous care. Primary care provides treatment for common illnesses, supports the management of long-term conditions, and contributes to prevention of future ill-health through health promotion, immunisation and screening activities. An important role for primary care is to co-ordinate the care of the many people who have multiple health problems and may be receiving care from many services.
Primary care also refer to a philosophy of care: offering a generalist approach, caring for people rather than specific diseases or organ systems; emphasising a patient advocacy role negotiating complexity of care over extended periods; recognising the importance of interpersonal relationships and the person-professional interaction; supporting health as a resource for living.
What is academic primary care
The discipline of academic primary care brings together practitioners, teachers, and researchers to promote excellence in primary care. Reflecting the complexity of the primary care task, primary care academics come from a range of disciplines and use multiple approaches to critically explore, evaluate and develop the understanding of illness and delivery of care.
Academic primary care is a distinct scientific discipline working within, and alongside primary care to support and challenge practice through scholarly activity. It contributes to the understanding and delivery of the primary health care concept through: articulating the values and body of knowledge that informs and develops practice; disseminating and developing the models through teaching and a process of continual learning; and studying the implementation, evaluation and impact of current policy and strategy. Academic primary care thus combines critical reflection with creative innovation to help develop, implement, evaluate and teach the clinical discipline
Reflecting the nature of the discipline, primary care research and teaching address a diverse range of topics including: policy relating to primary care; how primary care is organized and delivered, patients’ experience of health, illness and care; the epidemiology of disease and health problems encountered in the primary care setting; and the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions in primary care.
What SAPC does to support Academic Primary Care
SAPC provides a forum to share information and ideas through: organising national and regional scientific meetings; supporting communication through the website, newsletters, and our discussion pages in the Primary Health Care Research and Development journal.
SAPC represents and promotes the work of academic primary care on a number of key bodies related to research and education.
What SAPC does for its individual members
SAPC recognises that academic primary care IS its members. A key priority for the organisation is in supporting individual members through: regular communications with the Society; supporting dialogue between members and with external groups; promoting networking opportunities through provision of a member directory, on-line discussion opportunities and at regional and national scientific meetings. Members receive discounted conference rates and journal subscriptions. We support the work of Special Interest Groups bringing together people with like minded interests providing opportunities for collaborative learning and development.
About this position statement
This position statement is a working document intended to promote communication and dialogue with our membership as well as with external bodies. Whilst always holding on to our core values, we also recognise the changing environment in which SAPC works. The statement will therefore be reviewed and, if necessary, updated to reflect the needs and priorities of future situations. (Next planned review date: January 2016).
SAPC Exec
April 2011
Bibliography
Hobbs R, Glanville JM, Kendrick T, McNally R, Campbell JL. 2011. Is primary care research in the UK internationally competitive? A bibliometric analysos of high volume primary care researchers across six countries. BMJ (in press)
MacAuley D. 2010. Achievements of academic primary care in the last decade. BMJ Blogs
Kringos DS et al. 2010. The breadth of primary care: a systematic literature review of its core dimensions. BMC Health Services Research; 10: 65
The Academy of Medical Sciences. 2009. Research in General Practice: Bringing Innovation into Patient Care.
Scottish Primary Care Research Network. 2009. UK Primary Care Research Portfolio Review.
World Health Organisation. 2008. Primary Health Care. Now More Than Ever.
Royal College of General Practitioners 2007. The Future Direction of General Practice: a Roadmap
WONCA EUROPE 2005. The European Definition of General Practice/Family Medicine.
Mant D et al. 2004. The state of primary-care research. Lancet; 364: 1004-6
SAPC 2002. New century, New challenges. A report from the Heads of Departments of General Practice and Primary Care in the Medical Schools of the United Kingdom.
Prof Joanne Reeve
SAPC ASM 2022 Wednesday 6th July, keynote during the joint session SAPC/ASME 11.00-12.40
Presentation: Today’s doctor is a generalist: opportunities and challenges for academic practice
Health Education England declared “The future doctor is a generalist”. But it is today’s doctors who battle with the growing levels of whole person (generalist) problems – multimorbidity, treatment burden, problematic polypharmacy, persistent physical symptoms, and the list goes on... Barriers to delivering generalist care identified by my research include problems with both the evidence and education we offer to clinicians, and health services, to support the complexity of their daily knowledge work – the processes by which they make sense of illness. My work focuses on addressing those gaps. I’ll use examples from current projects (WISE GP, TAILOR, CATALYST) and others to describe the gaps, offer suggestions for “recovery and innovation”, and consider the benefits and challenges we might anticipate. I will conclude by inviting you to join me planning how we “future proof…our practical wisdom” as we work towards “recovery and innovation”
Biography
Joanne is an inner city GP and professor of primary care at Hull York Medical School, internationally known for her research and scholarship on medical generalism. She leads the national WISE GP partnership, is Chair of the SAPC Heads of Departments Group, and Director of the Academy of PC at HYMS where she also leads the flagship CATALYST programme. Her book, Medical Generalism Now, will be published by Taylor Frances in 2023.
Further details
My work tackles two of the biggest challenges facing modern health care systems. Namely, finding primary care solutions for the growing burden of chronic, complex illness; and building capacity for high quality, meaningful primary care scholarship to support the necessary changes.
The primary care approach is defined by a person-centred model of care. As a clinical academic, I lead an international collaboration to develop, implement and evaluate the provision of the individually tailored model of care that is expert generalist practice. My work is underpinned by expertise in the fields of complex interventions research, action research, and translational scholarship. As recent past Chair of the Society for Academic Primary Care, I lead work to enhance the capacity for advancing primary care through education and research; supporting quality improvement through the shared application of the skills of scholarship.
All of which is supported and sustained by my role as a non-principal GP in a busy inner city Practice in Hull.
Information for mentees
Hello!
I am Joanne – an academic GP working in Hull. I have benefited from being a mentee from early in my clinical career and in turn, enjoyed being a mentor for a number of years.
I am Professor in Primary Care Research at Hull and York Medical School (HYMS) . My research is in the area of primary care re-design based on person-centred/expert generalist principles. I have described the development of a new basic science of generalism, and now use implementation research and scholarship approaches to apply this work to tackling key challenges of today’s primary care (including multimorbidity, polypharmacy, mental health care and acute care). I work with clinical, academic and patient colleagues in the UK and internationally (including a Special Interest Group on Generalism within NAPCRG).
I have been a member of SAPC Executive since 2011 – initially as early career rep and communications lead. From 2013-2016, I was SAPC Chair. I am now co-opted on the Exec leading work on developing academic General Practice and GP Scholarship and chair of the Heads of Department group (HODs).
My own career has been an entertaining path of twists and turns. I have succeeded and failed in getting NIHR fellowships, grant funding, papers published, abstracts accepted… I have enjoyed and been challenged by development and leadership roles in local NHS, SAPC and RCGP.
I believe that we need strong academic primary care at the heart of a vibrant primary care community – scholarship leading and delivering innovation and improvement. So I’m delighted that you are developing your career in academic primary care too. And I would welcome working with you to help describe and achieve your career goals.
