Creating a safe healthcare environment for your patients is a team effort. In this issue, we take a look at infection prevention and control, which is the responsibility of everyone in your practice, from the cleaner to the GP partner. MPS Clinical Risk Programme Manager Julie Price offers practical tips to ensure you have a robust policy in place for the prevention and spread of infection.
Good infection control is imperative when it comes to minor surgery, too. Increasingly, GPs are performing minor surgery in practices. But potentially no intervention is minor, and there are numerous potential pitfalls to recognise, and avoid, in order to keep your patients – and yourself – safe. Dr Diarmuid Quinlan highlights these in
'Minor surgery, major risks'.
Patients may not always consider that air travel is risky, and it is important that GPs act in their patients’ best interests and only make statements that are truthful and honest
Our Careers section takes a look at another risk area – prescribing, whilst our article 'I've finished training, what's next?' and our regular section 'The Apprentice' chart the potential routes newly-qualified GPs can take for their next steps into the world of general practice.
Thank you to those of you who took part in our recent survey. Your feedback and suggestions for improvement are invaluable – and we will be putting these into practice for the next edition. Look out for more case reports and practical medicolegal guidance.
Dr Sonya McCullough
Editor-in-Chief, MPS Medicolegal Adviser
Disclaimer: All information is correct at the time of publishing (June 2014)