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RCGP Heritage
RCGP Heritage episodes
- Vaccines - PEAs we came towards the latter end of 2020, the NIHR [National Institute for Health and Care Research] supported a number of early phase studies of the vaccines, particularly Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine, that had come through, and then the, our organisation supported the, what are called, Phase 3 trials, the later trials of the vaccines, that demonstrated that they, a number of vaccines, demonstrated their efficacy. So again, we asked patients to take part, we had hundreds of thousands of people keen to do that and GPs were very much involved in that, either by contacting their patients and asking them if they’d like to be involved in a vaccine trial, but also some GP practices across the country actually delivered the vaccine trial themselves and they really very much stood up and were very keen to do that…2 min
- Panoramic Trial - PEFollowing that, and this was in 2021 towards the Omicron wave of the pandemic,.. it was felt by the government that we should test some of the novel antivirals, the new drugs subsequently developed or manipulated to be active against Covid-19 and that was again a call for research and that was successfully awarded to the University of Oxford, and we ended up working as GPs, and GP colleagues right across the country with the study team in Oxford, to deliver the Panoramic Study [Platform Adaptive trial of Novel antiviRals for eArly treatMent of Covid-19 in the Community]… We think it’s probably the biggest study of Covid-19 in the world, biggest randomised trial was done in the UK… We had great buy-in from GP practices – they were signposting patients to the website, but we also had GPs working as what we call hubs, so we had our network staff in the hubs, doing the research and identifying the patients who were positive… We had lots, thousands of patients, so 25,000 patients went into that study… In fact, on some days in Panoramic, we had so many patients wanting to take part that we couldn’t get them in through the system.2 min
- Principle Trial - PEI was very pleased that early on the CMO and colleagues identified a need for primary care studies. So we set up with colleagues in Oxford University what was called the Principle [Platform Randomised Trial of Treatments in the Community for Epidemic and Pandemic Illnesses] study, and we set up the Principle study which was going to be and was very successfully completed a study of lots of different drugs of patients in primary care with early Covid – these were not patients going into hospital, and the plan was to prevent them going into hospital by treating them at home in the community… We rapidly appealed to GP colleagues to help us. We knew we were going to need thousands of patients in the study… We had hundreds of GP practices, over that weekend in the middle of March when it all started to kick off – March 2020 – hundreds of practices volunteered… The Principle study set the way for doing a research study in general practice in the middle of a pandemic.2 min
- Spotter Practices - LDIt’s interesting now to see how we plan for future campaigns and futures. So, the importance of general practice, the importance of our role in terms of vaccination, in terms of community spotters. So, we’ve always done things like, like flu spotting practices, in Northern Ireland, where we’ve been responsible for monitoring the incidence of flu – are coming to the fore and I think will be important, ’cause there undoubtedly will be future pandemics.1 min
- Pulse Oximeter - MBWe kind of acted as a liaison between the profession and the academics… for instance, early on, what might the use of pulse oximeters be – where’s the evidence,.. or, how do you assess a breathless patient remotely – where’s the evidence? So there was quite a number of areas where we’d contact someone in the research community – Trisha Greenhalgh was particularly active.1 min
- Personal Loss - JLI remember looking at the vast numbers, terrible number of deaths we had in our patients, in April 2020… Actually, I can still picture some of those – there’s the thing about general practice, the continuity of care. I can remember one lady very clearly who used to come and see me, she wasn’t in a care home, she was elderly, she had auto-immune arthritis and she was on various immune-suppressants, uh, but actually, lived alone, she was a widow, lived alone, has a good quality of life, as far as I could see, and I went down the list and went, ‘Ah, no!’, these people who I knew and perhaps had known for many years, and so there was a direct impact... Our senior receptionist, whose been in the practice, what 25 years, she said to me one morning, in floods of tears, she said ‘Jonathan, these weren’t our patients, these were our friends.’2 min
- Vaccination - SMWe actually provide vaccinations for a population of 70/80,000 I guess and, again, it was really heartening the way the whole team came together to organise this… and I remember, uh, we were starting it on the Monday, I remember driving up to north London where I had some tents, and some gazebos, and stuff that I was storing in a friend’s, which I’d bought for a birthday party, um, we literally set up all these tents down the side of the building, so that people who were standing in the rain, had somewhere to cover, and they could queue outside and be under the cover. We later made that even more sophisticated, we had a whole covered walkway down the side of the building, so that actually people could queue outside, safely but would also be dry… We carried on business as usual, and basically what we did, it was a two floor surgery, upstairs became our normal business as usual surgery, uh, and downstairs was the vaccination centre.2 min
- Home Visits - JLThe proportion of home visits I did for very elderly patients went up, and that was because I found I just wasn’t able to do what I would describe as a proper job, you know in terms of assessing some of these people when you’re only on the other end of a phone…As I said, there was a lot of anxiety from staff, and also, you know, we didn’t want people to come in to waiting rooms… with the most vulnerable, so actually, cross-infection risk, that was correct… But for the most complicated patients… I made a decision to do my job… I didn’t feel, for me, as a very senior doctor, I didn’t feel that for some of the most complicated cases that it, it was satisfactory to do that remotely. So I took, you know, the precautions we had, you know, had a face mask, pair of gloves, and stupid plastic pinny thing, which I’m sure just got in the way,.. and I washed my hands, and when I came home I, uh, changed my clothes, uh, you know shower, changed clothes, clothes went in the washing machine2 min
- Hot and Cold Zones - NAIn the first couple of weeks, I would say, yes, it was extremely limited face to face appointments, and it was mostly remote, but patients who needed to be seen, whether that was in a care home, or home visit, that was done, you know… Now, for a long time, the other thing that happened was that, I think, the actual doors of the GP surgeries were closed, and I can see why that’s upsetting to patients because it feels like they are being shut out. But we were still working… all that meant was that you would have an appointment, but you would just have to come to the door and ring the bell, and then you would come in, and that was literally so that people could be guided to the right zones, or that, you know, social distancing could be practised. But of course we were seeing patients face to face – it simply meant we were triaging them beforehand, and directing them to the appropriate places, so, um, we had hot clinics at the hospital, so some patients were directed there, patients who could be manages safely remotely were managed in that way, and other patients would come to the door, which would be closed, but then they would ring the bell and we would see them.2 min
- Hot and Cold Zones - KCWe did get our systems fitted to be generally a one-way system… We’d see people in all the consulting spaces, if they needed to be seen… One of the things we were frightened of, was having to see an asthmatic who needed a nebuliser, because we were quite convinced that that was aerosol-generating… Apart from this one very anxious man, who I think was hyper-ventilating, we had to once see in our emergency room where we had labels and things saying, you know, swab after use, etc, uh, we didn’t have to give anyone a nebuliser… We had a rather convenient sort of corridor that led to a door, straight out the corridor, so we thought if you have to consult, we can then kind of wall off this bit of corridor – someone would come in, we’d give them a nebuliser, shut the door, come back when the nebuliser settled down – and they can knock on the door or something – but we did work a safe space that went directly out to the car park that someone could use as a tiny little treatment room, that would mean you would shut the person off from the rest of the surgery… and they could come in directly from the door in the car park… We had to kind of invent stuff…2 min
About RCGP Heritage
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The Royal College of General Practitioners was founded in 1952 to raise standards within the profession. It has the largest membership of the medical Royal Colleges and passing its rigorous membership examination is now compulsory for all aspiring General Practitioners.
RCGP Heritage, based at 30 Euston Square since 2012, in what is itself a Grade 2* listed building, looks after art, rare books and a collection of medical items and instruments. Additionally, the archives tell not just the institutional history of the organisation but of general practice more generally, with personal papers of a range of GPs from across the UK, both ordinary and eminent, and an actively growing Oral History collection.
This channel hosts a collection of historic College sound clips and related podcast content, linked to online exhibitions or contemporary issues in general practice.