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BJGP Interviews

BJGP Interviews

By: The British Journal of General Practice
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Summary

 Listen to BJGP Interviews for the latest updates on primary care and general practice research. Hear from researchers and clinicians who will update and guide you to the best practice. We all want to deliver better care to patients and improve health through better research and its translation into practice and policy. The BJGP is a leading international journal of primary care with the aim to serve the primary care community. Whether you are a general practitioner or a nurse, a researcher, we publish a full range of research studies from RCTs to the best qualitative literature on primary care. In addition, we publish editorials, articles on the clinical practice, and in-depth analysis of the topics that matter. We are inclusive and determined to serve the primary care community. BJGP Interviews brings all these articles to you through conversations with world-leading experts. The BJGP is the journal of the UK's Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). The RCGP grant full editorial independence to the BJGP and the views published in the BJGP do not necessarily represent those of the College. For all the latest research, editorials and clinical practice articles visit BJGP.org (https://bjgp.org). If you want all the podcast shownotes plus the latest comment and opinion on primary care and general practice then visit BJGP Life (https://www.bjgplife.com).Copyright 2026 The British Journal of General Practice Hygiene & Healthy Living Physical Illness & Disease Science
Episodes
  • Choosing general practice: What shapes medical student decisions?

    Choosing general practice: What shapes medical student decisions?
    May 12 2026
    Today, we’re speaking to Catharina Savelkoul, a DPhil student in Health Economics based at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.Title of paper: Factors Influencing UK Medical Students’ Choice of General Practice: A Systematic ReviewAvailable at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0226The UK faces a projected shortage of approximately 15,000 GPs by 2036/37, with a declining proportion of UK medical graduates pursuing general practice. Previous research has identified various contributing factors but lacked a contemporary synthesis within a coherent theoretical framework. This systematic review examines factors influencing UK medical students' career decisions, finding three critical influences: curricula that inadequately represents general practice, a persistent negative hidden curriculum, and the impact of clinical placement quality. Our revised Bland-Meurer model incorporates these findings, providing a comprehensive framework to improve GP recruitment. This systematic review identifies the factors that shape UK medical students’ intentions toward general practice.TranscriptThis transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.Speaker A00:00:01.120 - 00:00:59.530Hi and welcome to BJJP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan, one of the associate editors of the bjjp. Thanks for listening to this podcast today.In today's episode, we're speaking to Katharina Savalcool. Katharina is a DPHIL student in Health Economics based at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.We're here today to talk about the paper she's recently published in the BJJP titled Factors Influencing UK Medical Students Choice of General A Systematic Review. So, hi Katharine, it's lovely to meet you and to talk about your work.This is a super interesting area to study because we know that there is a push to increase the number of GPs in practice and I guess that does really start from medical school and people's intentions there. But just to start off, could you talk us through why you decided to do this work and what were you aiming to look at here?Speaker B00:01:00.050 - 00:03:17.090Yeah, of course.So the goal of this piece of research, of the systematic review was to synthesize the empirical evidence on the factors that influence medical students, GP, career intention. Because we know that the general practice is what makes the NHS functions.It handles over 300 million consultations annually, manages the long term, most long term conditions, issues over a billion prescriptions per year. And we also know that healthcare systems with a strong, with strong primary care achieve like, better population health in general.But at the same time, right now the projected shortages for the UK are approximately 15,000 GPs by 2036, which is of course a large number and shows like a workforce crisis. And then if we look at the policy response to this, they've been like quite ambitious but also largely unsuccessful.So for instance, Health Education England mandated that 50% of all new medical graduates should enter general practice. And this target has never been met. The same goes for the NHS long term workforce plan to increase GP training places by 50% to 6,000 places in 2031.And the interesting part about this is that the policy responses are all about setting this goal. Right?It's about, you know, we're shifting, we're shifting care to the community, we're expanding training places, more medical students should become a gp. But that's all. Yeah, setting like these, these, these strategies, but at the end it almost seems like the, we're achieving the reverse.So that, that kind of brought me to the question of if we want to, you know, make sure that we have a healthy primary care workforce, that the general practice avoids this large crisis in the future, then maybe Instead of setting these ambitious goals, we should look into the question of what draws medical students to the general practice and also what are some of the reasons why they might not become a gp?And I think if we zoom into those factors at medical school, during medical education, you get a lot more interesting insights that can actually inform more effective policy. I think that's the kind of. That was the reason I conducted this systematic review.Speaker A00:03:17.970 - 00:03:42.850That's a great summary of what's been going on with GP recruitment in the past little while in terms of policy and the push to increase the number of gps. And this was, as you mentioned, a systematic review that followed pretty conventional review processes.But I wonder if you could tell us a bit about this bland mirror model. It's a framework used in terms of organizing the results and how this informed how you structured the results.Speaker B00:03:43.990 - 00:04:47.410Yeah, I think it's for this specific research question, looking into factors...
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    16 mins
  • Looking back at the BJGP Research Conference 2026

    Looking back at the BJGP Research Conference 2026
    Mar 24 2026
    Today, we’re going to back at the recent BJGP Research Conference, which was held just last week on the 20st of March 2025 in Bristol. TranscriptThis transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.Speaker A00:00:00.960 - 00:00:39.550Hello and welcome to this BJGP podcast. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate Editors of the Journal. Thanks for listening today.In today's episode we're going to look back at the recent BJGP Research Conference which we held just last week on 20th March in Bristol. It was absolutely brilliant to welcome the BJGP team and people who attended to the Southwest.And in today's episode I'm just going to talk about some the highlights and really focus on what the conference is about and maybe have a chat about how to get involved in the future. But first, here's a welcome to the conference from our Editor in Chief, Ewan Lawson.Speaker B00:00:40.270 - 00:01:16.520My name's Ewan Lawson, I'm editor of the bjgp. So that means basically I'm the one person that the Journal would probably run without and everyone else does all the work.But I do have to stand up here and say hello to you and I want to offer you the warmest of welcomes to the conference. Been running this for a few years and it's always really nice to get together and just try to help each other, you know, get involved.It's not in a very scholarly way, you know, whether you're involved in research or whether you're interested in putting research into practice. We think we can offer you quite a lot more than just the fact that we publish research at BJGP and BJGP Open. So I hope you have a fantastic day.Speaker A00:01:17.320 - 00:03:26.850So this was the seventh run of the BJGP Research Conference and this year we had a particular focus on a few different areas.We took a bit of a deep dive into patient involvement, new and emerging research in general practice, general practice policy and how to get research into impact. And this year, as always, quite a bit around writing and also public speaking in academia.The conference kicked off this year with an absolutely brilliant talk by Professor Martin Marshall, who some of you may know as the Chair of the Nuffield Trust. But he's also Emeritus professor of Healthcare Improvement at UCS and non Exec Director at the Royal Devon University Healthcare trust.And until 2022, Martin was also the Chair of the Royal College of GPs and a GP in New East London. So definitely someone worth listening to about his experiences as well.And Martin really focused in his talk on the relationship between general practice and policy and asked a really important question, which is how good are we as a profession at influencing decision decision makers?And in his talk, Martin reflected on the fact that while the value of general practice is really well established for patients, communities and the wider nhs. It's often still misunderstood or undervalued at a policy level.And in his talk he challenged whether that's purely down to policymakers or whether, as Julian Tudor Hart once put it, there's also an element of political literacy within the profession itself.And what really followed was a thoughtful discussion about how both national leaders and individual clinicians can do more to shape policy, and whether that's through better communication, stronger advocacy, or even engaging more actively with the systems around us. It was a really thought provoking structure of the conference and linked closely to that broader theme of impact that ran throughout the day.Here's just a short snippet of Martin speaking at the conference.Speaker C00:03:27.570 - 00:04:45.260I wish I could have my career again and I'd be more influential than I was. I've learned a lot along the way, but this is what I've learned. First of all, as I've described, influencing is about far more than informy.It's not about telling, it's about getting inside people's heads and understanding what's important to them. A lot of influencing is about timing. How do we decide when to influence? I think it's really important. Policy windows is an interesting concept.So sometimes just a window opens that allows you to do something.And a good example of this would be the evidence around Continuity of care, which is actually pretty strong in General practice was largely ignored by policymakers and politicians until the pandemic came along and they were looking for a way of delivering the vaccination program. And we made the case based on evidence that trust is really important to the success of uptake of vaccination programs.And that's why government decided that general practice would deliver their program largely, rather than setting up a separate body to deliver it. So there's an example, another example of ways of change.The NUFRE is doing some really important work around the distribution, the resource distribution formula for general practice, something ...
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    12 mins
  • Skill mix and patient trust in general practice

    Skill mix and patient trust in general practice
    Mar 17 2026
    Today, we’re speaking to Dr Charlotte Paddison, who is currently non-executive director at Royal Papworth Hospital, and formerly a Senior Fellow and co-lead for Primary Care at the Nuffield Trust.Title of paper: Implications of skill-mix change in general practice: secondary analysis of data from the GP Patient SurveyAvailable at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0360To the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have investigated the impact on patient trust or perception of needs met when patients are unsure what type of health professional they have seen. Using data from a large national survey, this study found that patients expressed lower confidence and trust, and were less likely to report their needs were met in general practice consultations when they were not sure who their appointment was with. The results are novel in demonstrating that the combination of not knowing who you saw and a remote appointment is particularly problematic for patient trust.TranscriptThis transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.Speaker A00:00:01.600 - 00:00:58.530Hello and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for taking the time today to listen to this podcast.In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Charlotte Patterson, who is currently non Executive Director at Royal Papworth Hospital and formerly a Senior fellow and co lead for Primary Care at the Nuffield Trust.We're here to discuss the paper she's recently published here in the BJGP titled Implications of Skill Mix Change in General Practice Secondary Analysis of Data from the GP Patient Survey.So, hi, Charlotte, it's really lovely to meet you and to talk about your work and I just really wanted to start by exploring how we know that the composition of the general practice team is evolving with the increasing scope of multidisciplinary work. Really? And I wondered if you could just give us some of the context for this work and what you wanted to do here.Speaker B00:00:58.850 - 00:02:04.870Absolutely. Nada.So what we really wanted to understand was how two big shifts in policy are shaping the experience of patients care when they come to the GP practice. Why do we think that was interesting or potentially important?Basically, we've seen two big changes happening at the same time in the last five years. So.So we've seen the shift to multi professional team working with many more different types of health professionals working in general practice and at the same time, separately, we've seen a massive increase in the number of appointments delivered remotely. So what we wanted to know is what those changes really mean for patients.We also know that some patients feel confused about who they're seeing and when they turn up to a GP appointment at the surgery, whether that's an appointment with a GP or a physician's associate or a social prescriber.And this led on to another really important question for us in this study, which is what happens when patients are confused or uncertain about who they've seen and what does that mean for patient trust? Those are the kinds of questions we wanted to answer.Speaker A00:02:05.350 - 00:02:39.730So this was an analysis of the 2023 GP Patient Survey, which is sent to patients registered in English general practices.And I think the key thing for this work and what you've outlined just in terms of what you're saying right here, was that the survey asks people who their last general practice appointment was with and whether they had confidence and trust in that person and if their needs were met. And just given what you were describing, I wanted to move straight on to what you found.What did the patient say about trust and how did it Vary by different patient characteristics.Speaker B00:02:40.050 - 00:03:27.890Sure. So what we found in relation to trust. Nada.Is that while every 2, 2 in every 3 patients reported they definitely had trust and confidence in the health professional they saw at their GP practice. And that's very positive.We also found at the same time, there's a minority of patients, around 7%, who reported they did not at all have confidence and trust in their last GP practice appointment. And we found that trust is lower among patients who are younger, from minoritised ethnic backgrounds and living in more deprived areas.So that's what we found in relation to trust. We also found that patients are confused about different roles of health professionals working in general practice.And we've found this is likely to affect around one in every 20 patients.Speaker A00:03:28.370 - 00:03:30.290That seems quite a lot, actually, doesn't it?Speaker B00:03:30.530 - 00:04:26.740Yes.And it's also we found, looking at the GP general practice patient survey, we found that the proportion of patients who feel confused about who they're seeing has gone up over time.What I can tell you...
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    19 mins
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