TY - JOUR T1 - Facilitating care: a biopsychosocial perspective on long COVID JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 30 LP - 31 DO - 10.3399/bjgp22X718181 VL - 72 IS - 714 AU - Feryad A Hussain Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/72/714/30.abstract N2 - COVID-19 stands alone as one of the few world events to which every country and every citizen has been exposed. Now, with a rapidly growing research body, the disease trajectory has revealed several variations and subsequent long-term health conditions, forcing medical teams to review existing management and treatment strategies to reduce long-term ramifications.Long COVID (LC) has been identified as a long-term effect of the pandemic bringing new challenges for healthcare teams but the ongoing focus on COVID-19 means LC is given less attention, as are the related consequences and impact on services. LC research and healthcare teams have come together to share their clinical knowledge and experiences, to support each other to best manage patient needs. However, as LC services are rare, the spread of information is limited by geography and access to such networks. The absence of this information is arguably having the greatest impact on primary care services — as the initial source of patient diagnosis and referral to specialist services, this information is vital to patient care.This article aims to offer a biopsychosocial view of LC considering the context of wider government guidance to further support primary care services in their understanding of LC patient experiences and facilitate their management. While the focus of this article is LC, the impact of COVID-19, the pandemic, lockdown, and related psychosocial impact are also acknowledged as contributing to LC patient experiences.Diagnosis and prevalenceThe LC diagnosis emerged from experiences of COVID-19 patients whose symptoms extended beyond the clinical/governmental understanding of the trajectory. The introduction of a projected time frame for recovery allowed for a distinction between simple COVID and LC symptoms, offering clinicians a platform to inform them of a ‘new’ disease. Despite this, the diagnosis of LC comes with no agreed upon definition. Indeed, a review by the Centre … ER -