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Home / Healthcare & Medicine / Care / WISDOM - Tomorrow’s Doctor, Today: Supporting Today’s Expert Generalist GP / Re-imagining the role of a GP

Re-imagining the role of a GP

It is not what you know, but how you use what you know. We want to show you how you have the power to re-imagine your role as a GP.
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8.2
Through WISDOM we are aiming to show you, it is not what you know, but how you use what you know that makes a difference to patient care, professional practice and healthcare delivery. As we have highlighted, knowledge work is something all GPs do, but this distinct skill often goes unrecognised and undervalued which has a negative impact on patient care and clinician wellbeing. Now is the time to make this valuable GP skill more visible, so it is incorporated into the daily task of service provision. What does your working day look like at the moment? 35 patients a day at 10 minutes. Why do we run general practice like that? If you were redesigning practice, how else would you want to?
47.3
Could you re-design your day? We hope we have demonstrated that as a GP you have a role beyond seeing and treating patients. You have a role as a clinician scholar, to sustain the wisdom of general practice, to lead the way in knowledge generation and to facilitate the development of knowledge work skills in the team around you. You may recognise this to be very similar to the role of our secondary care consultant colleagues which is not a coincidence, you are a consultant in primary health care with a legitimate mastery of generalism as a speciality.
80.8
General practice is a career that has a wide variety of opportunities for developing knowledge work skills and what is fantastic is there is no one, correct way to do this but rather, multiple options to explore and pursue. For some career inspiration, take a look at our WiseStories on the WISE GP website for examples of how some of your colleagues have followed their interests into a range of portfolio careers. Throughout this week, we have given you a taster of way could get started and go beyond applying your knowledge work skills to your own practice. We have discussed implementing and learning from change, whether that is something clinical to improve patient care or a system change that benefits a wider community.
122.6
The act of learning and sharing that learning promotes a community of practice. You could join our community of practice at WiseGP to share what you are thinking of doing next and help build the Wise community.

Reflect on what you have learned this week.

  • Has it helped you set some of your own goals?
  • What do you think you will prioritise?
  • Which example did you find most exciting?
  • Would you use any of these ideas in your next PDP?

Consider the changing role of the GP… and also consider the future of general practice and your position as a WiseGP. How are you going to use your wisdom to develop your career as a general practitioner, whose work is underpinned by the expertise of clinician scholarship? A career, which enables you to undertake and lead a range of roles to shape, deliver and learn from primary healthcare practice. That recognises every GP has a portfolio of skills and activities in our working week?

Over to you

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This content is taken from
University of York online course,

WISDOM - Tomorrow’s Doctor, Today: Supporting Today’s Expert Generalist GP

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Take your ‘dangerous ideas’ and write an action plan (using the four elements of knowledge work) about how you might develop this further to expand your portfolio of skills over the next five years.

Please write this for yourself in the first instance, but feel free to share your thoughts with us at wisegpcouk@gmail.com or in the Comments below too!

Want to keep learning?

This content is taken from University of York online course
WISDOM - Tomorrow’s Doctor, Today: Supporting Today’s Expert Generalist GP
View Course
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WISDOM - Tomorrow’s Doctor, Today: Supporting Today’s Expert Generalist GP

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WISDOM - Tomorrow’s Doctor, Today: Supporting Today’s Expert Generalist GP

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