Social Case-work in General Practice: An Alternative Approach

During a two-year period a senior case-worker was seconded by a voluntary family case-work agency, the Liverpool Personal Service Society, to work with three general practitioners. The commonest reasons for referral of the 157 new patients to the social worker over this study period were extreme poverty; housing, matrimonial, and psychiatric problems; and problems of fatherless families. The successful and valuable co-operation between the general practitioners, case-worker, and various specialist professional and financial services of the Society have proved that a professional social worker has an important role in the general-practice team.     

General and Family Practice: New Guidelines to Prevent Atherosclerosis

The Scientific Board of the California Medical Association presents the following inventory of items of progress in general and family practice. Each item, in the judgment of a panel of knowledgeable physicians, has recently become reasonably firmly established, both as to scientific fact and important clinical significance. The items are presented in simple epitome, and an authoritative reference, both to the item itself and to the subject as a whole, is generally given for those who may be unfamiliar with a particular item. The purpose is to assist busy practitioners, students, researchers, or scholars to stay abreast of these items of progress in general and family practice that have recently achieved a substantial degree of authoritative acceptance, whether in their own field of special interest or another.The items of progress listed below were selected by the Advisory Panel to the Section on General and Family Practice of the California Medical Association, and the summaries were prepared under its direction.     

New Record Folder for Use in General Practice

A new concept for filing medical records in general practice is described, based on an A4-size folder; in experimental use in 40 practices doctors were generally in favour of the new system.     

Patients' Attitudes to Medical Students in General Practice

259 consecutive adult patients were interviewed regarding their attitudes to the presence of medical students at consultation, at examination, and at home visits. Few patients declared reluctance to discussing physical illness and smoking or drinking problems in the student''s presence, but many had appreciable inhibitions about discussing almost every other common component of consultation. Over half of the younger women interviewed would prefer students not to be present at physical or pelvic examination.Neither age nor social class showed significant association with declared preference, but previous contact with students did not decrease inhibitions among patients. Only 15% of respondents said that they would be more upset by the presence of two students rather than one.