The upheavals of the NHS reforms have caused a great deal of stress and uncertainty in primary care, and professional development and support for general practitioners needs to take account of this. This book offers a group supervision model which can be used to develop the core competencies needed for GPs to make the new primary care organisations work. The book analyses how primary care professionals have dealt with the various reforms of the past decade, and picks apart the paralysing culture of politeness, conflict avoidance and rivalry for power, to reveal how at the core of reform is the struggle for each GP to construct a new professional identity which integrates medicine, management and politics.It proposes ways GPs can benefit from these experiences to become equipped with the necessary competencies to be active members or dynamic leaders in the new primary care organisations. The doctor-patient relationship is no longer one-to-one, but located within a group matrix, in the same way that a GP is now required to work within a group framework. This book enables GPs to develop the essential group skills they now need, and on which the success of the healthcare reforms ultimately depends. 'A challenging approach to understanding and supporting the individuals who make up the primary care workforce. Gerhard Wilke has drawn on his experiences to identify the reasons behind the 'dis-ease' felt by many practitioners, and to suggest models for improving their morale. This book will be of interest to practitioners working through the challenges of continuing 'top down' reorganisation of the NHS and responding to the reconfiguration of general practice partnerships into PCGs and PCTs.'

As medical litigation continues to increase, the best defence for doctors is to be aware of, and avoid, medical errors. This book focuses on the key legal issues including medical documentation, which reduce risk and liability when handled correctly. It contains chapters on difficult patients and special issues for emergency physicians. The case-based format demonstrates clinical relevance and useful examples are drawn from office, hospital and community settings. This book is the companion volume to Learning from Medical Errors: Clinical Problems which focuses on the most common clinical situations resulting in malpractice litigation. Learning from Medical Errors: Legal Issues is vital reading for all doctors, medical lecturers and teachers and medical lawyers.