Hebden Bridge Web

Friday, 7 January 2022

Hebden Bridge Lit & Sci launch their new season with a lecture entitled What is happening to General Practice?

During the worst of the pandemic the Hebden Bridge Literary & Scientific Society, like most organisations, felt it necessary to curtail its activities but hope that the time has now come to launch a new season of lectures.
The society has a new look to their website and can announce the first lecture of the 2022 season, which to be on the safe side will be available on zoom only.

It will take place on Saturday 12th February at 7.30pm, and no doubt the subject - What is happening to General Practice? - will be close to all our hearts. It will be delivered by 2 eminent speakers Prof Aneez Esmail and Dr Sharon Spooner.

Prof Esmail will give a brief overview of how the current problems being experienced in General Practice have developed. These include the lack of appointments, the lack of continuity of care and the disappearance of many services that used to be provided by GPs. Although the problems seem to be related to the Covid Pandemic, we will hear that they go back much farther. Prof Esmail will argue that the lack of investment in primary care, the growth in numbers of hospital specialists at the expense of generalists in primary care, the increase in bureaucracy caused by enhanced monitoring and a focus on access at the expense of continuity have all contributed to the current crisis.

Aneez Esmail is Professor of General Practice at the University of Manchester and a practicing general practitioner at the Robert Darbishire Practice in central Manchester. He will propose some improvements based on his research and experience and discuss innovations that could form the basis of a new compact between patients and general practice.
Why it is so difficult currently to get an appointment with a GP?

Dr Spooner will help us understand what's going on, highlighting research studies that describe what has been happening to the general practitioner workforce. She will start with the career aspirations of recently qualified doctors then examine the motivation of more experienced GPs. She will consider their experiences of working alongside other healthcare professionals and present some thoughts on how things might be improved.

Dr Spooner is a clinical lecturer at the University of Manchester whose research focuses upon the delivery of general practice services and the people who deliver them. Her research is informed by many years of frontline clinical work as a General Practitioner which has included responsibilities for patient care, business and human resource management, clinical teaching, and the monitoring of performance.