Free Visual English Dictionary and Thesaurus | Discover meaning. Guiding patients through complexity: Modern medical generalism. An independent commission, chaired by Baroness Finlay, has concluded that more of the most talented doctors must be encouraged to make careers as generalists rather than specialists to meet people’s changing health needs. The Commission was set up by the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Health Foundation to examine the state of general medicine. It had the following terms of reference: Define medical generalism, with particular reference to general practice;Explore the intrinsic values of medical generalism;Define the role and value of medical generalism in contemporary clinical practice.Formulate a description of the medical generalist that:Is widely recognisedDefines what patients and the public should be able to expectClarifies how the medical generalist interfaces with other health care professionalsMake recommendations about the future development of medical generalism.
Read the independent commission’s press release. Hospital safety and complexity -- Morton 342 -- bmj.com. Coping with complexity: educating for capability -- Fraser and Greenhalgh 323 (7316): 799 -- bmj.com. Recent high profile scandals in the United Kingdom have highlighted the changing values by which the National Health Service is judged.1 The public expects, and the government has promised to deliver, a health service that is ever safer, constantly up to date, and focused on patients' changing needs. Successful health services in the 21st century must aim not merely for change, improvement, and response, but for changeability, improvability, and responsiveness. Educators are therefore challenged to enable not just competence, but also capability (box). Capability ensures that the delivery of health care keeps up with its ever changing context.
Education providers must offer an environment and process that enables individuals to develop sustainable abilities appropriate for a continuously evolving organisation. Capability is more than competence Competence—what individuals know or are able to do in terms of knowledge, skills, attitude Summary points. Delivering safe health care -- Barach and Moss 323 (7313): 585 -- bmj.com. Paul Barach, editor, Quality in Health Care (pbarach@airway.uchicago.edu), Fiona Moss, editor in chief, Quality in Health Care (fmoss@londondeanery.ac.uk) Author Affiliations See advertisement in clinical research edition (facing p 610), general practice edition (facing p 623), and other editions (facing p 583) One fundamental guarantee that we cannot give our patients is that faults and errors in the healthcare system won't harm them.
Of course, health care is by its nature risky. Not everyone undergoing surgery for an aortic aneurysm survives. Many interventions carry risks. But these risks are mostly small and usually quantifiable. Recent studies in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom and reports from the US Institute of Medicine and the UK Department of Health have drawn attention to the chronic “unsafeness” of health systems worldwide.1-7 This attention is not new.