Imperial College London Primary Care

More than ever before, clinicians are confronted with complex ethical issues in their medical practice. These include disagreements between patients, relatives, and healthcare staff over treatment decisions, difficulties in obtaining informed consent, and issues of medical error, truth-telling and patient confidentiality. Recognising the growing importance of ethical awareness in medicine, the recent Ethics in Practice report of the Royal College of Physicians (2005) concluded that key medical personnel should be suitably trained in clinical ethics. Increasingly, formal examinations in medicine assess applicants on aspects of clinical ethics. The new Applied Clinical Ethics (ACE) course is aimed at practising clinicians and members of CECs, focusing entirely on clinical ethics and practical decision-making. Several of the speakers are both clinicians and ethicists. The convenient arrangement of modules, each falling on a Saturday at monthly intervals, will enable practising clinicians ...

The departmental website is undergoing a major revision, starting with the undergraduate teaching pages. Comments welcome.

This week's seminar is by Dr Venkataraman Subramaniam, Clinical Research Fellow in Gastroenterology at St. George's Hospital London. The title is "Immunomodulators and steroids in inflammatory bowel disease". The seminar will be held at 12.30 pm in the Department of Primary Care & Social Medicine's Seminar Room . All Welcome.

This week's seminar is by Freda Mold, Angus Forbes and Alison While from Kings College London. The title is " Factors contributing to outcomes in people with type 2 diabetes in primary care ". The seminar will be held at 12.30 pm in the Department of Primary Care & Social Medicine's Seminar Room . All Welcome.

The departmental seminar programme for the Autumn Term starts on Wednesday October 4th. Our speaker is Dr Gillian Braunold , Clinical Adviser for Primary Care to Connecting for Health . She will speak about the NHS IT Programme and the benefits it can offer to primary care. The seminar will be held at 12.30 pm in the Department of Primary Care & Social Medicine's Seminar Room . All Welcome.

We have appointed two new members of staff recently to help with the running of our primary care courses. These are Ms Camilla Griffiths and Ms Faizah Malik.

Welcome to the Primary Care Blog at Imperial College . The blog is run by the Department of Primary Care & Social Medicine and is targeted at teachers and students of Imperial College School of Medicine's primary care related courses. These courses are for both undergraduates and postgraduates. Comments and suggestions are welcome from both groups. Your comments will help us improve our courses.