TY - JOUR T1 - Tips for GP trainees working in respiratory medicine JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 109 LP - 110 DO - 10.3399/bjgp12X625337 VL - 62 IS - 595 AU - Tim G Martindale AU - Katie Pink Y1 - 2012/02/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/62/595/109.abstract N2 - Respiratory medicine has a lot to offer the trainee. It's a great mixture of both acute and chronic illnesses, from the young with asthma and pneumonia to older patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer. There are practical procedures aplenty, and you will get very good at arterial blood gases (ABGs) and get the chance to perform invasive procedures such as chest drains; often as the ‘Respiratory SHO’, you get bleeped to insert them for other teams. There's a lot of the social side too, and that invariably includes relatives and the emotion that goes with a new diagnosis of cancer or just the realisation that one will never be able to return home due to a decline in lung function. As with every new job, do take time at the beginning of the firm to ask what you want to achieve out of the job and how it will benefit you as a GP trainee. If you don't do this early, you'll find yourself halfway through the job before you realise it. The chronic aspects of respiratory disease are perhaps the most important thing for GP trainees to take out of the attachment, and these are really only learned by clerking in people in clinic and presenting to the consultants. Of course, at the time there are so … ER -