Essential Primary Care

Essential Primary Care aims to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive overview of the clinical problems encountered in primary care. It covers the structure of primary care in the UK, disease prevention and the management of common and important clinical presentations from infancy to old age. Case studies are used in every chapter to illustrate key learning points. The book provides practical advice on how to consult with patients, make sense of their symptoms, explain things to them, and manage their problems.

Essential Primary Care:
Is structured in five sections:
– The building blocks of primary care: its structure and connection with secondary care, the consultation, the process of making a diagnosis, prescribing, and ethical issues
– Health promotion
– Common and important presenting problems in roughly chronological order
– Cancer
– Death and palliative care
Gives advice on how to phrase questions when consulting with patients and how to present information to patients
Provides advice on how management extends to prescribing – often missing from current textbooks
Contains case studies within each chapter which reflect the variety of primary care and provide top tips and advice for consulting with patients
Supported by a companion website at www.wileyessential.com/primarycare featuring MCQs, EMQs, cases and OSCE checklists

List of Contributors

Preface

Foreword by Chris Salisbury

How to use your textbook

About the companion website

Part 1: The Key Features of Primary Care

1 The structure and organisation of primary care
Andrew Blythe

2  The GP consultation 
Jessica Buchan

3  Making a diagnosis
Barbara Laue

4  Prescribing
Andrew Blythe

5  The interface with secondary care
Sarah Jahfar  

6 The everyday ethics of primary care
Trevor Thompson

Part 2: Healthy Living and Disease Prevention

7 Behaviour change
Jessica Buchan

8 Alcohol and drug misuse
Andrew Blythe

9 Preventing cardiovascular disease
Andrew Blythe

10 Caring for people with learning disabilities 
Andrew Blythe

Part 3: Common Presenting Problems

11 Tiredness
Andrew Blythe

Childhood

12 Child health in primary care 
Jessica Buchan

13 Managing the feverish and ill child in primary care
Alastair Hay, Lucy Jenkins & Jessica Buchan

14 Managing common problems in infancy
Jessica Buchan

15 Managing chronic conditions in childhood
Lucy Jenkins, Alastair Hay, Matthew Ridd & Jessica Buchan

16 Teenage and young adult health
Jessica Buchan & David Kessler

Early adulthood

17 Respiratory tract infections  
Lucy Jenkins

18 Low back pain
Jessica Buchan

19 Heartburn and dyspepsia
Jessica Buchan

20 Diarrhoea and rectal bleeding
Andrew Blythe

21 Common skin conditions
Matthew Ridd

22 Headache
Andrew Blythe

23 Fits, faints and funny turns
Andrew Blythe

24 Depression, anxiety and self harm
David Kessler

25 Sexual health and dysuria
Lucy Jenkins

26 Menstrual problem, contraception and termination of pregnancy
Jessica Buchan

27 Pregnancy
Jessica Buchan

28 Domestic violence and abuse 
Gene Feder

Middle and old age

29 Cardiovascular disease
Andrew Blythe

30 Breathlessness
Jessica Buchan

31 Joint pains and stiffness
Andrew Blythe

32 Urinary problems and prostate disease
Simon Thornton

33 The menopause
Jessica Buchan

34 Multimorbidity and polypharmacy
Polly Duncan & Andrew Blythe

35 Falls and fragility fractures
Andrew Blythe

36 Visual and hearing loss
Andrew Blythe

37 Dementia
Andrew Blythe

Part 4: Cancer

38 Spotting patients with cancer
Andrew Blythe

39 Looking after patients with cancer
Andrew Blythe

Part 5: Palliative Care and Death        

40 Palliative care and death
Andrew Blythe

Index