News From GP Conference, UK

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Also Included In: Conferences
Article Date: 14 Jun 2009 - 2:00 PDT

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GPs have warned that the reorganisation of health visitor services is putting children at risk and underlined the importance of them remaining in practice based teams. The call came at the Annual GPs Conference being held in London.

Recognising the important role that health visitors play in the primary care team, Dr Michael Haughney, a GP in Newton Mearns said:

"We are concerned that patient care is being compromised. Health visitors are key members of the practice team who provide vital care, particularly for mothers with young babies. There is a real danger that this high quality care will be lost if they are removed from our practices."

Later today the conference will debate the need for early screening for HIV in primary care. Dr Georgina Brown, a GP in Springburn Glasgow, said: "A quarter of all HIV deaths in the UK are directly attributable to the HIV diagnosis being made too late for effective treatment. If we could identify these patients and screen them earlier their chances of survival would improve dramatically.

"There's compelling evidence in favour of early screening. We need to move away from seeing HIV as a taboo issue and offer our patients opportunistic testing as a matter of course, where appropriate. The availability of antiretroviral therapy has transformed the outcome for patients diagnosed with HIV, it is essential that we ensure that more patients benefit from them."

Notes

The Annual Conference of Representatives of Local Medical Committees is being held in London on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 June.

Motion:
That conference
(i) deplores the demise of primary care teams
(ii) believes the safeguarding of children has been put at risk by the reorganisation of health visitor services from practice based to area based teams
(iii) demands a move back to practice based primary care teams
(iv) believes primary care teams should include at least community nurses, health visitors, and community psychiatric nurses

Motion 386
That conference calls on the Department of Health to:
(i) recognise that due to improved treatment, most patients with HIV infection no longer die from AIDS related complications, but that a good prognosis is dependent on early screening which is best done opportunistically in primary care and
(ii) to invest resources through the enhanced services programmes into early testing for HIV.

Source
The British Medical Association