Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx) Blog
Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx) Blog
Posted by jchoules
19 July 2016SAPC Conference, Dublin, 6-8 July 2016
The start of July just wouldn’t be the same without the national Society for Academic Primary Care conference – in its 45th year we found ourselves hosted by our European friends from Dublin, including the Department of General Practice, RCSI Medical School and the HRB Centre for Primary Care. Colleagues from across the UK descended on Dublin airport, and I wasn’t the only person wondering which passport queue we might need to j
oin (?non-EU) next time I graced this fair and friendly city.
The conference had a full programme, packed with numerous high quality presentations across the breadth of primary care activity. For many, a highlight was Chris Dowrick(University of Liverpool) presenting the 3rd Helen Lester Memorial Lecture entitled “Suffering and hope”. In this talk Chris challenged ideas around the current emphasis on unitary diagnostic categories and the reliance on medical interventions for common mental health problems in primary care settings. He argued the need for a more socially-orientated perspective on the understanding of psychological distress and how we manage it holistically, without over-medicalising psychological health. Although this is only one example, I had the sense that many academic colleagues were in a similarly reflective, and somewhat melancholy mood around the role and function of general practice-based primary care in the UK; increasing stress and workload, against the context of chronic under-funding has taken its toll over the last few years. Am I gloomy about the future though? No. Morale may be low, and the challenges of recruiting and retaining the workforce are very real. However, the one thing I have learnt over the two decades of working in primary care is that it is full of resilient, creative professionals who put people at the heart of what they do. They may be a little down at the moment, but I can sense they’re just working out how to sort it out before they get on with it. Of course, a glass or two of the brown stuff in the Temple Bar district is always good for the little grey cells.
For a summary of the conference and video link click
Sue Richards, Senior Lecturer in Primary Care, Exeter