DAUK has today welcomed Jess\u2019s Rule, a new safety initiative which urges GPs to \u2018think again\u2019 if they see a patient three times and cannot identify a diagnosis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK GP co-lead, told national radio listeners the crisis in general practice undermined continuity of care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the shortage of GPs added to the safety issues for patients that Jess\u2019s rule aimed to end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rule is named after Jessica Brady, who died aged 27 of cancer in December 2020. Jessica had contacted her GP on more than 20 occasions after starting to feel unwell earlier that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Taylor, who trained GPs for 30 years, was speaking about the new rule on the Nick Ferrari Breakfast Show on LBC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said: \u201cAs a father of three daughters in their twenties, this case is tragic and frankly should never have happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m horrified that this young woman was turned away so often. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a stark reminder to all of us in medicine that serious illness can strike young people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf a patient comes back again and again, we must stop and ask ourselves: what are we missing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Taylor stressed that the shortage of GPs and a lack of continuity of care was an issue that needed to be addressed, alongside the introduction of the new rule.\n\n\u201cOne problem is we\u2019ve gone from 1,800 patients per GP to 2,300 patients per GP in the last ten years,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cThere just aren’t enough GPs and continuity of care and the opportunity to see a patient again is eroded.\n\n\u201cThe proportion of face-to-face consultations aren\u2019t as high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJessica needed to be seen. I would have called her in. I would have seen her face to face, and I hope my colleagues in the future will do the same.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Taylor described Jess\u2019s Rule as \u2018a think-again policy\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf a patient has turned up three times, it\u2019s hang on a second, am I missing something?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA good doctor would do that anyway,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
DAUK committee members are all volunteers and campaign on issues facing frontline doctors in their own time. Please support our work by joining DAUK<\/a> or donating to our GoFundMe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DAUK has today welcomed Jess\u2019s Rule, a new safety initiative which urges GPs to \u2018think again\u2019 if they see a patient three times and cannot…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[22,304,23],"class_list":["post-1432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dauk-news","tag-dr-steve-taylor","tag-gp-committee","tag-gp-crisis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2298,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions\/2298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}