Primary care and coronavirus
Coronavirus resource hubs for primary care
Royal College of GPs Covid-19 resource hub
This hub, developed in collaboration with Macmillan, includes resources to support GPs to understand and manage the coronavirus pandemic. It includes information on topics from diagnosis to keeping your practice safe.
Health Protection Scotland primary care guidance
On this hub you can download the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Guidance for Primary Care PDF. It features information on the management of patients in primary care, including general medical practice, general dental practice, optometry and pharmacy.
Visit the Health Protection Scotland website to download the guide >
Londonwide LMCs' official resources and guidance
This hub contains several useful downloadable resources relating to coronavirus. It ranges from patient registration during the pandemic to a remote examination guide.
Having difficult conversations
Right now, conversations around end of life care are even more difficult than usual. They may have to be shorter, or take place through personal protective equipment (PPE) or over the phone.
We have created the recordings to replicate telephone and Skype calls and illustrate the following scenarios:
- An older patient who has co-morbidities but is currently well. Their GP phones to discuss advance care planning.
- An elderly patient at home with multiple co-morbidities and COVID symptoms, in a Skype conversation with their GP.
- The daughter of a patient in a care home phones her mother's GP on learning that her mother has COVID-19.
- A follow-up phone call from a GP to a patient with advanced bowel cancer and liver metastases.
This is part of our Courageous Conversations package. These recordings provide some useful strategies, words and phrases. There are also learning points and links to other resources on this subject.
We have more information about having difficult conversations with your patients and their families.
More useful tools and resources
NHS England
- NHS England - Standard operating procedure (SOP) for general practice in the context of coronavirus (COVID-19)
- NHS England - Advice to Trusts on maintaining cancer treatment during the COVID-19 response
- NHS England - COVID-19 prioritisation within community health services
- NHS England - Second phase of NHS response to COVID-19: Letter from Sir Simon Stevens and Amanda Pritchard
General Medical Council
British Journal of General Practice
Support for your patients
The Macmillan coronavirus hub has lots of information for people with cancer, from how it is affecting work, to information about treatment.
If you have a patient who is worried they may have cancer and is unsure how coronavirus may affect what happens next, our page Coronavirus guidance for people worried they have cancer is for them.
For questions about what will happen to people's treatment during coronavirus, our page Cancer treatment and coronavirus may help.
General support for GPs
Our support for primary care page includes toolkits, guidance documents and online training modules to support GPs with cancer patients from diagnosis through to end of life.
Primary Care 10 Top Tips series
In this series of downloadable PDFs, we offer 10 practical hints, tips and information on a variety of primary care situations. See our 10 top tips on:
We have more top tips for GPs and Practice Nurses on our website.
How we can help