The Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Academic Primary Care will be held in Gateshead, July 2005. This is the premier UK and Ireland conference for teaching and research in primary care, and will have much of interest for anyone who works in primary care. You are invited. See www.sapc.org.uk.
Academic medicine is all very well in its place, but does it really interest those practising in the ‘real world’? While GPs are up to their knees in mucus and blood, prescribing budgets and quality indicators, are the academics swanning around debating ethereal points about scientific methodology, hermeneutic phenomenology and the psychology of learning?
No, that is Myth number 1, as will be demonstrated. Myth number 2 is that there are not many GP academics at all, which we will also discuss. Both myths stem from our undergraduate experiences in bygone eras, when general practice was a marginal component of the curriculum. However, primary care is now at the top of the policy and service agendas, and academic primary care has a …