Primary Care at the forefront of prevention

Wed 19 February 2020

Wolfson College

GPs in England provide over 340 million consultations per year, 90% of all NHS consultations occur in primary care. Over twelve months 80% of people visit their general practice at least once and the average person sees a GP six times. Primary care is therefore an obvious context in which to detect disease early and prevent the development of disease. Indeed there is a long tradition of disease prevention in primary care. However, at the same time as the focus of medicine increasingly shifts towards predicting and preventing disease, there is growing concern about over-medicalisation of society and a recognition that most people are not helped by the majority of primary prevention interventions. Furthermore, over-stretched primary care teams are struggling to meet the needs of patients with existing disease. Around a million people in the UK live with dementia, over 3 million with multiple long-term conditions, and within 10 years 3 million will be living with or have survived cancer. In this lecture I will share some thoughts on how we might square the circle and efficiently deliver effective prevention in primary care.

Cost: FREE