The book aims to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive overview of the clinical problems encountered in primary care.

It covers the structure of primary care in the UK, disease prevention and the management of common and important clinical presentations from infancy to old age. Case studies are used in every chapter to illustrate key learning points.

The book provides practical advice on how to consult with patients, make sense of their symptoms, explain things to them, and manage their problems.

Essential Primary Care is co-authored by practicing GPs Dr Andrew Blythe, deputy director of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees, and Dr Jess Buchan, a Teaching Fellow, at the University of Bristol’s Centre for Academic Primary Care.

Dr Blythe said: “At Bristol we have a large team of GP teachers and researchers. We teach medical students in all five years of their course so for a while I had thought we should use our experience to create a textbook that students could carry with them throughout their time at medical school and beyond. As we planned the book, we found lots of other people in Bristol who were very willing to contribute, including students whose artwork is reproduced in the book. The final result is a truly collaborative Bristol project which we hope is enjoyable to read.”

Dr Buchan said: “I am really proud of Bristol’s undergraduate Primary Care teaching; from the first year of the curriculum our students have fantastic opportunities to meet and learn from patients in their communities, and learn from the GPs and the Primary Care teams that provide care to those patients. We wanted to write a book that reflects that diverse and hands on learning experience. We have included lots of case studies that bring that learning to life and we hope help both students and qualified doctors navigate the rich coalface of medicine that is Primary Care.”

Essential Primary Care is structured in five sections:

• The building blocks of primary care: its structure and connection with secondary care, the consultation, the process of making a diagnosis, prescribing, and ethical issues
• Health promotion
• Common and important presenting problems in roughly chronological order
• Cancer
• Death and palliative care

The book gives advice on how to phrase questions when consulting with patients and how to present information to patients; provides advice on how management extends to prescribing - often missing from current textbooks; contains case studies within each chapter which reflect the variety of primary care and provide top tips and advice for consulting with patients; and will be supported by a companion website with self test questions: multiple choice questions, extended matching questions and practice stations from objective structured clinical examinations.

For more information about the book and to pre-order your copy, please visit Wiley