SAPC News & current events

Academic primary care improves primary care. To maximise impact from academic primary care, we need a strong workforce. This report forms part of SAPC’s ongoing work to examine barriers and enablers to careers in academic primary care. It makes recommendations for work needed to maximise the potential for academic primary care to make a difference.

This qualitative scoping study exploring career paths of current members of the academic primary care community. The study spoke with staff at various career stages, including people with research and education roles. Both clinicians and Primary Healthcare scientists were included in the study. The report highlights some common problems experienced across the academic primary care community.

Second prize in the 2014 SAPC Dangerous Ideas soapbox went to Robert Fleetcroft and Amanda Howe, who gave us a role play to show us why they believe Significant Event reviews would be better if the patient was present.

Read their report of their idea in the British Journal of General Practice.

Third prize at the 2014 SAPC Dangerous Ideas Soapbox went to Mica Skilton, a 3rd year medical student at Birmingham University. She argued that much of Undergraduate GP skills training could be replaced by an app. She describes her ideas for this new Virtual GP venture in the British Journal of General Practice.

The latest of the SAPC Hot Topic papers, published in our sister journal Primary Health Care Research & Development, looks at how we raise the profile of APC.

In this latest SAPC Hot Topic article, Sarah Mosedale and Paul Wallace provide an overview of NHS organisational changes focusing on the implications and opportunities for academic primary care. In particular, the importance of describing a clear vision of how APC offers solutions in a changing primary care context, and promoting the relevance of curiosity-driven primary care research.

The 2013 winning entry in the SAPC Dangerous Ideas soapbox proposed that physiotherapists, not GPs, would be the best gatekeepers for primary care musculoskeletal services. Annette Bishop, Nadine Foster and Peter Croft explain their ideas in this SAPC Hot Topic article.

The inaugural winner of the SAPC annual Dangerous Ideas soapbox competition offered an example of  blue sky thinking making a difference in primary care. Scott Murray argued that since death is a fact of life, we need to spend more time talking about death. Research from the academic primary care community supports five reasons why “bringing death back to life” would be good for patients, practitioners, the NHS and wider society.

This SAPC Hot Topic article responded to the recent report by Professor Graham Watt calling for greater recognition of the importance of blue sky research in primary care.