Reclaiming general practice
WiseGP aims to promote, advance and sustain the distinct knowledge work of primary healthcare.
Knowledge work is the missing piece in current efforts to modernise primary care for today’s healthcare needs. WiseGP works to promote, advance and sustain this knowledge work by enabling Wise people, Wise workplaces and Wise policies.
Working with partners from across primary care, our key goals are to:
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Promote Knowledge Work: raise understanding and awareness of the vital and distinct contribution of generalist (whole person) knowledge work to tackling today’s healthcare challenges.
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Advance Knowledge Work: developing resources that enable staff and ultimately patients to use knowledge work to enhance person centred health care.
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Sustain Knowledge Work: working with stakeholders to create the spaces needed to sustain knowledge work.
In 2004, Gabbay & le May published research that described how GPs work to create practice-based evidence, or what has been termed knowledge-in-context(1). This work allows clinicians to use, but also move beyond, biomedical scientific evidence to effectively tailor the healthcare they deliver to the needs of individuals, families and communities.
This distinct work is crucial to the effective delivery of the whole person model of primary healthcare that we know delivers efficient, effective and equitable healthcare(2). But, this work is being undermined and lost in today’s healthcare: by the way we train and support the people doing this work, the way we design and run their workplaces and by the way that policies shape the work they do.
WiseGP was established to restore this knowledge work and so to reclaim whole person primary healthcare.
References
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1. Gabbay J, le May A. (2004). Evidence based guidelines or collectively constructed ‘mindlines’? Ethnographic study of knowledge management in primary care. BMJ. 329(7473):1249–1252.
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2. Kringos DS, Boerma WGW, Hutchinson A, Zee J. van der, Groenewegen P. (2010) The breadth of primary care: A systematic literature review of its’ core dimensions. BMC Health Services Research. 10(1): 65.
