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BJGP Interviews

BJGP Interviews

By: The British Journal of General Practice
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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
  • Quick wins or eat the frog? How GPs prioritise their day

    Quick wins or eat the frog? How GPs prioritise their day
    Jun 30 2026
    Today, we’re speaking to Andrew McClarey, who works as a GP and Education co-ordinator Lead for General Practice in the Scottish Centre for Simulation and Clinical Human Factors. Title of paper: “Quick wins” vs “eating the frog”: Exploring general practitioners’ prioritisation dilemmasAvailable at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0628Link to tactical decision making games: https://archive.johs.org.uk/article/doi/10.54531/svvw4195This is the first study to look at the factors which experienced GPs consider when prioritising their acute workload. Several themes have emerged which highlight the importance of prioritisation training in General Practice. These themes could be used to teach prioritisation decision making to GP registrars or in the creation of continuing professional development resources for experienced GPs.TranscriptThis transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.Speaker A00:00:00.400 - 00:00:56.560Hi and welcome to BJ GP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for listening to this podcast today.In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Andrew McClary.Andrew is a GP partner and he also works as Education Coordinator, Lead for General Practice in the Scottish Centre for Simulation and Clinical Human Factors. We're here today to discuss the paper that he's recently published in the bjjp.And the paper is titled Quick Wins versus Eating the Frog, Exploring general practitioners Prioritization dilemmas. So, hi, Andrew, it's really nice to meet you.And this paper really stood out to us, I think, because prioritisation is something that gps do every day, but it's not really something that we discuss explicitly. I'm just interested in what made you do this work and made you interested in studying it.Speaker B00:00:57.200 - 00:02:00.600It's interesting, I think, that for me, I finished my GP training just after the pandemic and therefore I did a lot of my training during the COVID pandemic. And around then the face of general practice, like most things in life, changed completely overnight.We moved on to telephone consulting and being encouraged to have empty waiting rooms.And I think around the same time we realized that we probably couldn't continue doing what we had been doing, which was being everything to everyone, which brought us on to prioritizing our workload. We have to decide who needs seen, who does not, and when are they seen. And that was a real gap for me in the training that I was provided.And I found myself going into working as a fully qualified GP without really an awareness of how to prioritise in a, in a sensible way. And I think that's where this interest was born out of.Speaker A00:02:00.760 - 00:02:42.050And before we get into what you found, it's probably worth saying a little bit about how you approach the study. So this was a qualitative interview study involving gps from a range of practices and career stages.And what you did was you really explored how they prioritized work during the course of a typical surgery.And then I guess through those interviews you looked at sort of the strategies and influences and trade offs that shaped those decisions in everyday general practice. But one of the things I found really interesting was that prioritization wasn't just about clinical urgency.And I wonder if you could talk through some of the other factors that GPs are weighing up quickly, I suppose, when they're deciding what to tackle first.Speaker B00:02:42.690 - 00:06:17.800Absolutely.It was very interesting, the themes that emerged from the data and also actually how much agreement There was amongst the gps in the focus groups, as we're not traditionally a group of people who agree about very much. So one thing that GP is particularly interested in, there's five main themes. One is about the system awareness.So we're aware about our own surgeries and where the pressure points are.For example, we're low on particular acute slots today, or there's a certain type of patient that is coming in more frequently at the moment, so we're aware of that. But it's not just having that awareness, it's also being able to adjust how we consult based on the pressures that the system are under.For example, if there are a lot of children or fevers coming in, we want to see them all face to face. We ask the admin team, just bring them all in face to face and we'll see them that way, rather than setting everything up over the phone.So it's not just an awareness of the system, but actually adjusting ourselves to that demand. Another one is the time management. What's the most efficient use of my time?How am I going to get out on time this evening for nursery pickup or whatever else I have to do in the evening? But it's not just our time, it's also the system's time.So what I mean by that is, I know if I try and refer to a hospital service in the afternoon, ...
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    18 mins
  • Parents as partners - Improving paediatric safety in general practice

    Parents as partners - Improving paediatric safety in general practice
    Jun 23 2026
    Today, we’re speaking to Dr Tom Purchase, a GP and Health and Care Research Wales NIHR doctoral fellow.Title of paper: Co-generating ideas for safer paediatric care in general practice with parents and stakeholdersAvailable at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0690Research has highlighted the important role parents play in in paediatric patient safety, for example, through mitigating safety incidents in general practice, yet their perspectives have rarely shaped system-level improvements. This study co-generated and prioritised ideas for change with parents and key stakeholders, identifying feasible and impactful strategies to improve paediatric safety in primary care. These strategies centred around practice communication, accessing care records and results, and fostering a culture of shared learning and development. Parents are willing and able to contribute meaningfully to safety improvement efforts, and their insights align with national patient safety priorities. Clinicians and policy makers can use these findings to strengthen collaboration with families, tailor safety interventions to local needs, and embed parent voices into the design of safer care systems.TranscriptThis transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.Speaker A00:00:00.480 - 00:00:49.500Hello and welcome today to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for listening again to this podcast.In today's episode, we're talking to Dr. Tom Purchase. Tom is a GP and a health and Care Research Wales NIHR Doctoral Fellow.We're here today to talk about the paper he's just published in the bjgp and the paper is titled Co Generating Ideas for Safer Pediatric Care in General Practice with Parents and Stakeholders.So, hi, Tom, it's really great to meet you and to talk about your work, but before we talk about the study itself, I'm interested to know what first got you interested in pediatric patient safety in general practice.Speaker B00:00:50.060 - 00:02:26.850Thanks. It's born, I think, out of an extension of the work that we've been doing within the patient safety team within Cardiff University.So a lot of what we do is looking at incident reports, safety incident reports, and trying to pick out what are the, you know, high level key learning points and takeaway messages from those.And then within the team, we started to think about, as well as the types of incidents and the types of harms that are occurring within pediatric incidents. For example, how are parents involved?And it was a bit of a novel approach to what we normally do, trying to have that extra aspect within the incidents and figuring out how parents were either helping to contribute or to mitigate against the incidents, not just looking at the incidents themselves. So that was the starting point, really.And then once we'd started digging into that data and identifying that, actually the majority of the time, which is in one of the papers that was published last year in BJGP, 77% of the reports we were looking at specifically around general practice showed that parents were taking these mitigatory actions that, you know, positive actions that were able to prevent harm or further harm from occurring to their child, for example, chasing results or chasing referrals or importantly, being able to speak up. And then that highlighted, I think, the importance of parents being able to have a voice and advocating on behalf of their child.And that really sparked, I think, the interest, and therefore this part of the.Speaker A00:02:26.850 - 00:02:46.490Project, and I think that's a really interesting thing about this paper, is that it focuses on parents and parents not just as observers of care, but as active contributors to safety. And I wonder what your thoughts are about why that's an important shift in how we think about these things.I think you've touched on it a bit, but yeah, I'm interested to know a bit more about that.Speaker B00:02:46.810 - 00:03:55.980I think it is a really important aspect of care, but also particularly safety, which maybe is untapped in terms of parents as a resource as to how we can keep children safe.We know that children on the whole are more, maybe not more vulnerable, but certainly are a vulnerable group when it comes to patient care in general and patient safety.And that's because they're so heavily reliant on others to speak on their behalf, to make sure somebody else is looking out for their healthcare needs. And therefore they are probably playing a part within the world of patient safety.And there are good studies from hospital relating to incident reports that show that parents are capable of picking up issues early on. They're able to detect issues that maybe other parts or people within the system aren't detecting.And as I mentioned, our paper from last year specifically looking at general practice showed that ...
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    19 mins
  • From symptoms to signals: Using AI for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer

    From symptoms to signals: Using AI for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer
    Jun 16 2026
    Today, we’re speaking to Dr Garth Funston, a GP and Clinical Senior Lecturer in Primary Care Cancer Research at Queen Mary University of London. Title of paper: Using large language models to identify pre-diagnostic clinical features of ovarian cancer from healthcare records: a population-based case-control studyAvailable at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0366Most women with ovarian cancer present with symptoms, but many symptoms are recorded only in free text healthcare records and missed by studies and clinical decision support tools that rely on coded data. We found that using large language models (LLMs) to extract symptoms from free text records substantially increased symptom detection and strengthened associations with ovarian cancer. Incorporating LLM-extracted symptom information into research and clinical decision tools may support identification of women at higher risk of cancer and aid appropriate investigation.TranscriptThis transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.Speaker A00:00:00.800 - 00:00:50.940Hi and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for listening to this podcast today.In today's episode, we're talking to Dr. Garth Funston, who is an academic GP and clinical senior Lecturer in Primary Care Research at Queen Mary University of London.We're here to talk about his recent paper in the BJDP which is titled Using Large Language Models to Identify Pre Diagnostic Clinical Features of Ovarian and Cancer from Healthcare Records.So, Garth, thanks so much for talking to us again today, but I wonder, just before we get into the AI side of this paper, can you briefly explain the clinical problem you're trying to address here with ovarian cancer diagnosis in general practice?Speaker B00:00:51.500 - 00:01:55.010So most women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed after they develop symptoms and see their doctor. The challenge is that most symptoms are really non specific. There's no real red flag symptoms for ovarian cancer.That makes it a real clinical challenge for the GP to kind of recognize it and perform tests.So the symptoms are things like abdominal and pelvic pain, persistent bloating, urinary urgency and frequency, things that we see really frequently in gp. So knowing when to consider ovarian cancer is the big challenge.And we know that certainly a proportion of women see their GP multiple times before the diagnosis. Now we're lucky for ovarian cancer in that we have reasonably good triage tests and CA125 and transvaginal ultrasound.So the challenge really is to identify women with these non specific symptoms early so as we can work out who to test and hopefully improve early diagnosis and on outcomes in that way.Speaker A00:01:55.250 - 00:02:14.530Yeah, and I'm sure you're well aware of sort of the body work around this area and people like Willie Hamilton, who's done work around early diagnosis of ovarian cancer, along with Claire Bankhead, and they did some really interesting work around things like bloating, didn't they? But that was slightly different, I think, and a little bit that's some time ago now, isn't it?Speaker B00:02:14.930 - 00:02:39.230Yeah, it was some time ago. I think all of that is, you know, fundamental and still holds true.And they did a lot of work around things like IBS and in women over, over 50 and things like that that are kind of these subtle signs that we need to be aware of with ovarian cancer.So, yeah, we know there's lots of features that are associated with ovarian cancer, but it's recognizing when to invest to get those features because they're so common.Speaker A00:02:39.630 - 00:02:49.310Yeah. And do you think that's why it's described as difficult to diagnose early in general practice? Is it because the symptoms are so common?What are your thoughts on that?Speaker B00:02:49.390 - 00:03:48.750I think there's a few reasons.I think ovarian cancer used to be called, certainly in the media, the kind of the silent killer and terminology, which I really, really frustrates me, because we know it's not. We know that most women of symptoms for diagnosis. We actually know that from this paper and other papers that are symptoms in early stage cancer.But that kind of thought around ovarian cancer still holds. Secondly, the symptoms are nonspecific, they're reasonably common. I mean, you know, I probably see a.A patient with abdominal pain most days and it's kind of working out which ones to investigate for ovarian cancer. Yeah. And so I think those are the main things. And thirdly, it's, you know, it's not the most common common cancer.GP will see people probably only encounter a case of ovarian cancer every three to five years, a new case. And that's the extra challenge. It's kind of suspecting it when it's a rare thing in primary care.Speaker A00:03:49.100 - 00:04:03.500Yeah. And one thing I found really ...
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    16 mins
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