u/Green-Quantity4397

I’ve seen a fair few social media doctors online brand themselves as GP’s with specialist interest in various things.

I had always thought this required you to have some extra accreditation or qualifications. However, looking at some of their profiles, it seems many have just found something they’re interested in and told everyone it’s a “specialist interest”, perhaps to give them more legitimacy.

Is this technically allowed or are “specialist interests” only reserved to specific scenarios (e.g. diabetes, dermatology) where you’ve undergone specific, post qualification training?

My partner is a newly CCT’d consultant who works in a clinic heavy specialty and has generated a small social media following over the last 2-3 years as a senior registrar.

Many of said followers have already expressed interest in seeing her on private, self-pay basis and she’s now keen on setting up a small online clinic to serve these patients.

She very much wants to be independent and not get involved with any private hospitals or providers. It seems therefore the biggest hurdle will be getting CQC registered and we would appreciate any advice on how best to approach this, if anyone here has done something similar, as well as approximately what the up front costs something like this would entail.

Unlike hospital consultants, GP’s are under no obligation to take on the role of clinical or educational supervisors.

You’d think this would be pretty obvious but if you have zero interest in being a supervisor or trainer, then please for the love of god do not sign up to become one.

Yours sincerely,
A disgruntled trainee

After months of torture having to use a £20 Amazon otoscope kindly provided by my training practice, I’m finally going to bite the bullet and buy my own.

Looking at Welch Allyn and been told I need to go for a macroview.

Any suggestions for which one specifically? Medisave seems to have several described as macroview, LED ones, rechargeable ones and others with various price points. Will be getting the full diagnostic set.

Probably overthinking but I’d rather buy correctly the first time to (hopefully) last a lifetime. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Those couple of mins where you sit around waiting for the smart card password screen to pop up makes me want to rip my hair out and hand in my notice. Please for the love of god why does it take so long,

Fed up of all this portfolio nonsense and looking for a quick win for my leadership activity requirement for ST3.

Any ideas would be appreciated, hoping to do something that takes minimal time / effort and all the examples on the RCGP website seem to be the exact opposite of that.

I work in a big training practice and there’s at least 3 registrars soon to CCT, well-liked and been with the practice >12 months, clinically good, exams passed and work autonomously with little to no input from their supervising GP.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper to ask these registrars if they would like to cover vacant shifts than fork out for expensive post-CCT locums? Seems like a no brainer to me.

I’ve had a particularly horrible morning of appointments filled with people coming in with dizziness.

I find these presentations an absolute nightmare and I’ve met a fair few people who feel the same.

Any advice from more experienced GP’s on a stepwise approach to these consultations?

As above, interested to know people’s thoughts, why this might be the case, any examples from day to day practice and how one might avoid becoming said crappy locum doctor (as someone hellbent on not taking on a poorly paid salaried role).

I’ve become really slick at taking obs in adults. BP cuff on, pulse oximeter at the same time and can quickly gauge if they’re tachypnoeic whilst the cuff is inflating. Can have a whole set of obs in less than 60 seconds.

However, I’m struggling to do the same in children. Getting a HR and RR takes me absolutely ages and eats into my consultations. Any advice on how to get this done faster?

Also wondering if anyone uses a pulse oximeter for kids like they do in ED / paeds? Seems like a handy piece of kit and always wondered why it’s not more routinely used in primary care.