Programme

Within military medical centres and in the role one space, medical officers are required to ensure they and their teams remain up to date in responding to medical emergencies. We spend time in GP training upskilling trainees in pre-hospital care in preparation for potential deployments to austere environments.  But how often do we run scenarios in our GP practices to help us and our teams deal with medical emergencies? With increasing time and manning pressures, how do we integrate emergency practice in a safe space? 

In this session we will learn from each other's current practice. Attendees will be provided with pre-prepared moulages to trial in the session and take away with them to trial in their own workplace. 

Age is the one protected characteristic that all of us experience – but it is often forgotten. Ageism at any stage can expose us to discrimination and negative attitudes, and can influence our options and opportunities. In earlier years, it can act as a barrier to new roles and development. Later, the transition for GPs towards retirement can mean loss of status, and unnecessary loss of productive work roles. This workshop will use evidence and examples from members of lived experience of conscious and unconscious bias to raise awareness, and help us be ‘active bystanders’ to confront ageism.

Asthma affects 5.4million people in the UK across age groups. The vast majority of diagnoses and long term management throughout life is in primary care. National guidelines (BTS / NICE / SIGN) released in November 2024 suggest very significant changes to making the  diagnosis and in management of asthma across the UK. This session will discuss the pragmatic practicalities of implementation and cover the clinical tips that will help improve care (support planetary health) and make clinical care easier. It will be aimed at the active clinician wanting to improve the care they provide.

Meaningful activity/work is a determinant of health and as GPs, at the heart of the community, we see the impact that good and bad work has on our patients every day. The evidence is overwhelming. In 2019 the AoMRC launched its work and health consensus statement detailing how the health service could respond to this health inequality, yet very little has changed. The updated consensus statement will be relaunched in 2025. We will show you how you could make small changes within your consultation to help reduce this health inequality in your patients and demonstrate the benefit it can bring.

“If I take any more pills, I’ll rattle doctor” … What can we do?

Prescribing is one of our key skills. Medicines can be life saving but can also cause harm. We are dealing with considerable complexity, how do we navigate the risks and benefits?  This workshop aims to build confidence in Managing Multiple Medicines and will be based on real-life case scenarios, with opportunity to discuss, share good practice and consider everyday medicines dilemmas. We will highlight tips & tools to take back to practice.

Join Dr Lucy Pollock, consultant geriatrician & author and Tessa Lewis, GP to navigate the challenges. 

The session explores how lifestyle medicine's six pillars—nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, substance reduction, and social connection—promote both personal health and environmental sustainability. This session will highlight the intersection of healthcare practices that benefit individuals and the planet, with insights from Greener Practice and resources from the RCGP’s Net Zero hub. Attendees will learn how adopting sustainable practices in healthcare not only improves patient outcomes but also reduces the sector’s environmental impact, supporting a healthier future for all.

The aim of the session is to increase awareness among colleagues in primary care about the skilled worker visa rules and their impact on training and on trainees and newly qualified GPs.

A significant number of our GP Registrars are international medical graduates; and a significant - and rising - number are new to the UK when they start their GP training.

Working whilst on a visa brings additional challenges - logistical, financial, and emotional - which those who have not experienced it may not be aware of.

This session will share lived experience of training and post-CCT life on a visa. In addition, it will share information on the visa requirements that new NHS GPs may continue to have post-CCT and encourage colleagues to explore how their practices could become visa sponsors.

Empathy is a powerful force in healthcare, boosting patient outcomes, practitioner well-being, and reducing complaints. But what about empathy within teams? This interactive session dives into the importance of empathy between colleagues, backed by evidence that it enhances service user outcomes and practitioner resilience. Despite empathy often declining during medical training, research shows it can be taught—and its impact multiplies when healthcare teams work cohesively. Join us to explore the evidence, engage in discussions, and create practical action plans to cultivate a more empathic, connected primary care team.

Following the outstanding success of the GP trainer session at the 2024 RCGPAC, Margaret and I would like to keep GP trainer support on the agenda.  It was noted at the conference (and in council) that the deaneries are not prioritising trainer support and the RCGP and local faculties can add value to members through this route.  From the session we have some practical and achievable ideas to help support GP trainers and supervisors, which can be implemented quickly.  The ideas will involve little in the way of administration, cost very little indeed and have a high impact.  What we would like to do is share what has happened across the 4 nations, working in collaboration with COGPED (they were very supportive of the session that we ran this year) and energise GP trainers with both practical support, recognising excellence and reinforcing the importance of the RCGP to the training community.

We know that primary care clinicians are encountering more distressed young people than ever before and may feel ill equipped to assess, signpost and support them with their wellbeing. This session is a dynamic, interactive presentation exploring recent advances and evidence-based, developmentally appropriate healthcare through a deep dive into the backend of the HEADSS assessment. Let's explore how we approach talking to adolescents and young people about Sex, Drugs, and maybe a little bit of Rock and Roll, and how we can improve so our young people feel safe and seen and our clinicians feel empowered and confident.

This session will go through the journey of managing a primary health care centre in a conflict zone from the experience of both speakers who have worked with UK-Med as General Practitioners. We will discuss how we created a chronic disease register and how difficult it was to manage chronic diseases without the necessary resources. We will then discuss in the 2nd half of the talk how important it is to tackle chronic diseases and the common health challenges of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, giving an insight into why these conditions are poorly controlled.

Recap and refresh on BLS, CPR procedures, CPR, Adult, Child, Infant from the UK Resus Guidelines, and Agonal Gasping. 

Practise CPR on Adult, Child and Infant manikins, and how to use an AED (Training Defibrillator)

On leaving the course everyone will leave with a Certificate of Attendance for the BLS session, stating that Adult, Infant and Child CPR has been included and safe use of an AED, a first aid book and a revive aid face shield.

The flagship RCGP leadership programme Shaping the Future employs the principles and situational learning that is central to Action Learning Sets.

This workshop is aimed at GPs,  GP registrars and ACPs and AHPs who wish to attain additional knowledge and skills around small group facilitation, specifically action learning set methodology. Through our feedback from the Shaping the Future programme, the small group working has consistently been rated as the best and most valued aspect of the programme.  Bringing together peer learning and shared problem solving within a safe space, deep learning and active reflection occurs.

At the end of the session participants will be equipped with new knowledge and skills in the theory and practice of action learning sets to take forward in their own settings.

Women, people from black and ethnic communities and disabled people are under-represented in chair and non-executive roles in the NHS.  The Messenger review of NHS leadership, published in June 2022, highlighted within its recommendations the importance of equality, diversity and inclusive leadership. Proportionally GPs are less likely than other medical and other clinical professionals to gain regional and national leadership roles. Clinical CEOs come from varied clinical backgrounds, with 42% from mental health (including psychiatry) and 12% trained in paediatrics. 

This has been brought to the RCGP by members who hope the RCGP can provide developmental opportunities.

The RCGP has a successful Shaping the future leadership programme with Northern Ireland and Faculty participants and a valued offering in Wales. Once a member has graduated from one of these or equivalent leadership programmes, they become eligible to apply to our shadowing scheme where developing GP leaders shadow an established leader for a day or two. Alongside this we provide mentoring of leaders and mentoring by leaders and are considering a leadership coaching offer. This session aims to change the current lack of GPs being accepted onto Aspiring Chief Executive Leadership programmes by a presentation from GP leaders of their routes to their roles focusing particularly on increasing GP leaders from less well-represented groups. GPs from the global majority remain proportionally under-represented in senior positions and the numbers with declared disabilities are particularly low. 

This session will explore what it means to be a leader and uncover leadership opportunties within the College. Through engaging with your local Faculty, these are closer than you think!

Come and find out more about experience and skills you can gain through engaging with your Faculty Board and hear about the groundbreaking ‘Shaping the Future’ leadership programme being delivered to members through RCGP Faculties.

Connection is your Superpower – Sharing lessons from NHS Practitioner Health, arguably the happiest place to work in the world!

Join us for an interactive session that reveals the secrets behind the UK’s NHS Practitioner Health's success as a world-leading mental health and addiction service for healthcare professionals. Built on compassion, care, and connection, we will share evidence-based strategies that strengthen human and social bonds—proven to boost team performance, enhance mental health, and even improve longevity. Discover practical tools we use to foster psychological safety and create thriving work environments. Learn our innovative "5 a day" approach to connection, and leave feeling inspired, energised, and equipped with an action plan to enhance wellbeing in yourself and your teams.

Pharmacogenomics underpins genomics-informed prescribing, utilising genomic variation to predict medication effectiveness and adverse reactions at patient-level.  NICE guidance CYP2C19 genotype testing to guide clopidogrel use after ischaemic stroke or transient ischaemic attack was published in 2024 with immediate impact in primary care; CYP2C19 genotype is relevant in guiding prescription of Clopidogrel and other common primary care medications including SSRIs and PPIs.  The session will increase confidence of Primary Care prescribers in deploying genomics-informed prescribing by equipping them with an understanding of Pharmacogenomics, implications, and work streams and informatics solutions to support delivery within primary care prescribing workflows and daily clinical practice.

Recap and refresh on BLS, CPR procedures, CPR, Adult, Child, Infant from the UK Resus Guidelines, and Agonal Gasping. 

Practise CPR on Adult, Child and Infant manikins, and how to use an AED (Training Defibrillator)

On leaving the course everyone will leave with a Certificate of Attendance for the BLS session, stating that Adult, Infant and Child CPR has been included and safe use of an AED, a first aid book and a revive aid face shield.

We will discuss how doctors reason in practice and share common examples of biases that affect our reasoning, the impact they have on patients, and ways to mitigate against these. We will introduce a novel framework, ‘Stop and Think’, and using authentic case-based examples, show the relevance and impact of asking ourselves questions from the framework to support clinical reasoning during a consultation (reflection in-action) as well as afterwards (reflection-on-action ). We will also discuss how we can use questions from the framework to approach challenges related to learners’ clinical reasoning in practice.

We present an interactive escape room style small group activity exploring the challenges of navigating GP appointment systems, based on findings from our recent NIHR funded study of access to general practice – Access to General Practice: Innovation, impact and sustainable change.

Using a series of “fiendish” puzzles, we show that while triage systems to get an appointment can seem simple they may be very difficult for some patients, especially when they are unwell. People trying to access general practice may have time constraints in addition to individual and social factors that make using access systems challenging.  We reflect on potential equity and system level implications. 

Recognising “ordinary dying” is a core skill in General Practice, which often provides families with much valued care of their loved one at the end of their life and is equally rewarding for many GPs.

Primary and Community Care deliver the majority of end-of-life care outside of hospital.  In this session, we will explore how fragmentation of care can threaten this important relationship, and how Primary Care has a role in both recognising supporting terminal care for older people in the community.

We will revisit the Gold Standards Framework evidence and provide a useful framework for recognising a deterioration due to frailty how to write an advance care plan with a difference.

While bereavement in general is a topic that all GPs will be familiar with both professionally and for many personally, bereavement following the death of a child feels different. As a GP who has experienced the death of a child I feel ideally placed to help GPs explore the issues that child bereavement brings for a parent and how they can look to support. This session will be me 'in conservation' about this topic.

This session will introduce participants to simple genetic concepts and genetic research relevant to primary care. We will focus on research being undertaken by the session facilitators: how genetic markers indicative of red blood cell conditions, more common in minority ethnic communities, are associated with underestimation of blood glucose by HbA1c. Following this, in small groups, we will use case vignettes to facilitate discussions around proposed pathways to incorporate pharmacogenomics and personalised medicine into primary care.  We’ll discuss the opportunities and pitfalls of personalised medicine; as well as how genomics has the potential to both tackle and exacerbate health inequalities.

A fun interactive session looking at ways to introduce toys, technology and games into primary care undergraduate medical education. This session will look at how the community clinical lecturing team collaborated with the learning and teaching academy at Cardiff University, to implement a new teaching day. The day was developed to be an engaging and authentic learning experience to meet the needs of third year undergraduate medical students in helping them to prepare them for their community placements. It includes hands-on demonstrations of 3 components of this day using Lego, a Mr Potato head and Virtual Reality (VR) goggles.

This session aims to discuss, offer appropriate advice and help people learn about the GP role in the care of people, of all ages, with concerns about their gender identity or sexuality.

This is not intended to be a debate over the current polarised views that exist with respect to gender identity. This workshop is a pragmatic workshop for GPs and other healthcare professionals seeing people with these issues. A practical, case based, approach to the ten minute consultation and follow up within an healthcare system that is constrained by limited resources and reduced access to services. 

This session will focus on my project aimed at increasing uptake of the NHS Cancer Screening Programme using multilingual resources. Based on work within an inner-city multi-ethnic Birmingham practice, I will share key findings and demonstrate why these resources are being utilised across the city and reversing negative trends. Attendees will learn strategies for engaging patients from diverse linguistic backgrounds and receive practical tools for implementation in their practice. The session will provide insights on how in primary care, on how primary care professionals can innovate and leverage existing resources to enhance accessibility and care, particularly for non-English speaking communities.

Our RCGP Conferences are vibrant hubs of discussion about the challenges and opportunities in general practice. When RCGP prepares an election manifesto, we aim to harness those ideas. General Practice in Wales is in crisis. The number of GPs and practices has been falling. Despite these challenges, we believe that with reform and resourcing general practice can not only thrive, but it can be at the forefront of alleviating pressures in the wider NHS.

Hear how RCGP Cymru Wales is making the case that general practice is a big part of the solution to a sustainable Welsh NHS.

This session delves into the intersection of traditional educational methods and the rise of AI in planning learning activities for GP trainees and medical students. Dr. Rebecca McConnell and Dr. James Waldron will share insights from their extensive experience in education, exploring the quality, effectiveness, and ethics of AI-assisted educational planning. Participants will compare AI-driven approaches with conventional methods and assess their potential impact. Through interactive activities, attendees will create an educational plan with AI’s assistance and engage in a lively discussion about its risks, benefits, and future implications.

Debate creates a platform where individuals from varied backgrounds can express their viewpoints. By allowing everyone to participate, it ensures that voices from marginalized or underrepresented groups are heard. Structured debates often require participants to explore opposing views, challenging biases and fostering mutual respect. As a result, participants build empathy, which is foundational to inclusive practices with significant benefits for education, workplace culture and policy. Despite its importance, we are not taught how to debate well and there are no fora that encourage this. This session will explore ways of supporting informed debate within our profession and more widely.  

Session details to follow

Currently we are in a new era where  weight loss medications, such as GLP1 agonists like Semaglutide are being promoted and made available to the general public. 

These medications have been described as safe, effective and transformative for health by some experts.

This session with be in the form of a debate between members of the RCGP ethics committee, with one team for and one against the motion. 

Our session will provide an overview of the bespoke leadership programme, Tyfu, that we have designed for women GP trainees in Wales who have been identified as requiring additional educational support. We will cover the origins of the programme as well as the content, initial feedback and results.

In GP practices in areas of blanket deprivation (by Index of Multiple Deprivation), there are several areas of demand and resource mismatch resulting from seeking to serve these areas. It’s difficult to deliver both healthcare and research in these areas but it is essential that practitioners and their patients are given the opportunity to participate in research so that our research is inclusive, diverse and can meet the healthcare needs of underserved populations

This session will explore how engaging and supporting GP practices in these areas to participate in research can reduce health inequalities.

There is growing acknowledgement of Food Insecurity as an important social determinant of health. Food Banks, initially set up for emergency food provision, are now relied on regularly by many people, including those in paid employment. Linked with this are concerns about the provision of nutritional food for those suffering from Food Insecurity.  In response, various social enterprises “Social Supermarkets” have developed throughout the UK, providing discounted foods with an emphasis on dignity for their users. General Practitioners are often unaware of what local Social Supermarkets offer, including their provision of holistic allied services linked to user wellbeing.

Robust cross-sector working is crucial to support the provision of good quality healthcare.

The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) has published over 60 reports on a variety of clinical topics with recommendations to improve both clinical care and the organisation of care. Many of these reports have specifically addressed the importance of a multi-disciplinary team (MDT), which includes primary care, to improve the quality of care provided to patients.

The purpose of this session would be to explore NCEPOD recommendations relevant to primary care, and to discuss ways to increase local implementation.

For two hundred years, hospitals have been the place to learn medicine in the UK.  Not so primary care, which was late to the party, but has recently become a key factor in undergraduate medical education.  This talk starts by charting the long march of general practice towards increasing legitimacy as a place to learn medicine.  We consider why recent times have seen GP become an increasingly prominent factor in medical education. We then explore what general practice has to offer to medical schools, the challenges we face in delivering student placements - and how we might overcome these.

Dermatology developed as a specialty in Europe in the 19th Century, so the first descriptions of skin conditions were based on their appearance on white skin. However, 200 years later, our textbooks and teaching at every stage of medical education are still lacking in representation of all skin tones. This results in under diagnosis and under treatment of people of non-European ethnicity. 

In this session we will explore the different presentations of common conditions in skin of colour, learning how to recognise and treat people from diverse backgrounds, taking into account lifestyle factors and cultural preferences.

General practice plays a key role as the primary entry point to the health care system, diagnosing diseases, treating both chronic and acute conditions and coordinating patient care. But general practice is facing many challenges. More people are suffering from multiple conditions, medical records are becoming more extensive and it’s difficult for doctors to identify patterns indicating serious illness. Timely and individualised treatment for each patient is crucial to treat, manage risk and prevent disease in the population.

Greener Practice has undertaken a number of initiatives to support low carbon and sustainable healthcare. We plan to offer practical examples of climate leadership in primary care from the work we have undertaken.