Issues 2004

January/February

• Unity through diversity
• Bush telegraph - Improving outcomes for rural and remote patients with chronic heart failure
• Letters to the editor
• A queer practice
• Indigenous health in my own community
• Rural practice in Victoria - A personal experience
• Flying by the seat of my pants!
• Outer suburban practice
• A day in the life of an academic GP
• Where did I go right? - A career as a rural doctor, wife and mother
• Helping refugees integrate into our community - Reflections from general practice
• Eating disorders in adolescence - An approach to diagnosis and management
• The summer skin check
• Nipple pain in breastfeeding
• Chasing tests
• Action research as a learning tool in general practice
• Brain teaser: Droopy eyelids and double vision
• How to write a medicolegal report
• Medicare - a systems failure
• Postcards: The blood is strong
• Taking personal responsibility for our health - Nectar or a poisoned chalice?
• Clinical practice guidelines for the psychosocial care of adults with cancer
• Book reviews
• Talking to patients about death and dying
• Opportunistic electronic reminders - improving performance of preventive care in general practice
• Acute bronchitis in Australian general practice - a prescription too far?
• Smoking cessation and nicotine replacement therapy in current primary maternity care
• Complementary medicine - making it work
• Obesity in children - Tackling a growing problem

March

• The ultimate balancing act
• Early management of upper limb fractures in general practice
• Osteoporosis - diagnosis treatment and management
• Patient education 'the forgotten link in managing osteoporosis
• Physical activity and bone health
• Paget disease of bone - Diagnosis and indications for treatment
• Vitamin D in Australia - Issues and recommendations
• Patient education - Paget disease of bone
• Shoulder stiffness: diagnosis
• Shoulder stiffness: management
• Spider bite - the redback spider and its relatives
• Eye series - Tennis ball injury
• Brain teaser - Brown pigmented lesion
• Clinical challenge
• Training and supporting GPs in providing palliative care to a Vietnamese Australian community
• Failure to diagnose fractures
• Scott you could have lymphoma
• Can training reduce the rural workforce shortage
• The challenge of general practice
• Barriers and enablers for implementing general practice training
• Nurses in urban and rural general practice - Who are they and what do they do
• RACGP training registrars perceptions and practice of prostate cancer screening
• Training GPs in cognitive behaviour

April

• Comorbidities in general practice
• Managing 'metabolic syndrome' and multiple risk factors
• A smoking related triad: PAD, COPD and CCF
• Falls, osteoporosis and atrial fibrillation
• Psychiatric comorbidity in general practice
• Managing schizophrenia in general practice
• Cannabis and psychosis
• Patient education: Gait re-training exercises
• Consensus statement for the prevention of vascular disease
• Hyperinsulinaemia
• The funnel web and common spider bites
• Gastrointestinal health - the role of pro- and pre-biotics in standard foods
• Obesity case study
• Clinical challenge
• Brain teaser: Growth on tongue
• Discussing benefits and risks with patients - PSA testing
• The collaborative method - a strategy for improving Australian general practice
• Simulation training in emergency medicine - an important need for primary care training
• Patients' views on the training of medical students in Australian general practice settings
• Peer reviewed publications rates: an indication of research output
• The use of diabetes registers in an urban division of general practice

May

• Editorial: Cough, please...
• Lower respiratory tract infections and community acquired pneumonia in adults
• The causes and diagnosis of influenza-like illness
• A coughing child: could it be asthma?
• Pertussis: presentation, investigation and management
• Lung cancer
• Cough mixtures: not always for cough
• Interpersonal counselling in general practice
• Patient centred CBT for chronic pain
• Corneal graft case study
• Clinical challenge
• General practice education in Australia
• Evidence based answers: could sildenafil cause rape?
• Brain teaser: wrinkled skin after acute eczema
• Missing test results and failure to diagnose
• Small group peer support for GPs treating mental health problems
• Postcards: Tanzania - East Africa
• Learning a golden rule...the hard way
• Supervising research students in primary health care using a leadership model
• Attitudes of teachers to evidence based medicine
• GPs' experience and attitudes toward new genetics: barriers and needs
• Australian GPs' preferences for education about depression and related disorders

June

• Back pain - the Australian experience
• Back pain - clinical assessment
• Acute low back pain - assessment and management
• Lumbar radicular pain
• Diagnostic imaging for back pain
• Interventions in chronic low back pain
• Back pain rehabilitation
• Back pain and opioid seeking behaviour
• Patient education: Low back pain
• Undertaking a literature search using PubMed
• Brain teaser: Red, irritated eyes
• Unilateral red eye
• Clinical challenge
• Teaching medical students - what's in it for teachers?
• How to plan, deliver and evaluate a training session
• A pain in the back case
• Marriage: is it good for you?
• Postcard from Kirakira
• Primary Care Alliance for Clinical Trials
• Enhancing the population health capacity of general practice
• Which patients are prescribed COX-2 inhibitors rather than nonspecific anti-inflammatory drugs?
• Suboptimal anticoagulant management after hospital initiation of warfarin
• General practitioner multidisciplinary skills for enhanced primary care

July

• What gets under your skin
• Presentations of 'itch' in Australian general practice
• Why am I so itchy?
• Itch: a symptom of occult disease
• Urticaria
• Vulval itch
• Pruritus ani
• Patient education: Itch - skin care management
• Patient education: Good vulval care
• Injecting drug use and skin lesions
• A systematic review of brachytherapy
• Itchy eyes case study
• Clinical challenge
• Demystifying the FRACGP exam
• Brain teaser: Knee swelling
• Can I see the medical records?
• Case studies of change - addressing family support needs of rural GPs
• Indigenous voices and community trials
• Staff team building, or just 'FISHing'?
• The trouble with CBT
• When is an intervention ready to be tested in a randomised trial?
• Which test to detect microalbuminuria in diabetic patients?
• Reasons for incomplete immunisation among Australian children
• Do regular check ups and preventive drug use reduce asthma severity in school children?

August

• Faces in the crowd
• Patients with disabilities and complex communication needs
• Children and adolescents with developmental disabilities
• Adults with intellectual disability and the GP
• The assessment and treatment of behavioural problems
• When the child with ADHD grows up
• Rehabilitation for postpolio sequelae
• Quinine associated blindness
• Clinical challenge
• Brain teaser: Facial swelling and tenderness
• Does my patient have capacity to consent to treatment?
• The search for a disease
• Home medication review
• People with intellectual disability
• Gathering meaningful outcomes in interventional trials in general practice
• Women's attitudes to and practices of breast self examination
• Pain as a sequela of Parkinson disease
• Are general practice registrars prepared for immunisation?
• Ultrasound imaging for shoulder pain in general practice
• Arabic speakers with diabetes mellitus

September

• Teaching and learning in rural general practice
• Failure to diagnose: melanoma
• Meaninglessness
• Overseas trained doctors
• GP claims for completing diabetes 'cycle of care'
• Randomised trials - cluster versus individual randomisation
• Village birth attendants in Papua New Guinea
• How to undertake research in general practice
• General practitioners in teaching practices
• Getting a life
• Flexible teaching and learning in general practice
• Giving feedback to learners in the practice
• Practice based assessment
• Management of the impaired doctor
• The growing challenge of party drugs in general practice
• What's in the doctor's bag?
• STIs in pregnancy
• I'm pregnant - should I have these tests?
• Eye series: Pupil disorder
• Brain teaser: Skin lesion
• Clinical challenge

October

• Research in the aged
• Encounters with older patients in Australian general practice
• Prescribing in older people
• Normal cognitive changes in aging
• Diagnosis and management of dementia in general practice
• Health assessment of elderly patients
• Malnutrition in older people - screening and management strategies
• Elder abuse
• Advance care planning and end of life decision making
• Alcohol and other drug use in later life
• Managing adult sexual assault
• Toxic epidermal necrolysis caused by lamotrigine
• Poststroke depression
• Brain teaser: Whitish, linear striae on the knees
• Clinical challenge
• Presbyopia case study
• Where there's a will...
• Australian consumers' expectations for expanded nursing roles in general practice - choice not gatekeeping
• Mortal dread - 'So you're telling me there's no cure? That I'm going to die?'
• Role play and medical education
• A guide to using role plays in registrar teaching
• How do Australian GPs manage shoulder dysfunction?
• Experiences of viscosupplementation for knee osteoarthritis
• Teaching and learning in general practice

November

• Current status of hormone therapy in general practice in Australia
• Hormone therapy - weighing up the evidence
• Assessment of women in midlife
• Is this menopause? Women in midlife - psychosocial issues
• If not hormones - then what?
• Menopause - a treatment algorithm
• Menopause forum - a case discussion on midlife issues
• Dysfunctional uterine bleeding
• Guidelines for the management of postmenopausal osteoporosis for GPs
• Benzodiazepine dependence
• Writing a police statement
• Eye Series: Dry eyes, menopause and hormone therapy
• Clinical challenge
• Brain teaser: Unexplained lactation
• Clinical guidelines: breast cancer
• Changing attitudes to 'the change'
• Better outcomes - a case study
• What's new in research that should change the way we detect and treat hypertension?
• Data monitoring (and safety) committees - what are they and why do we need them?
• Sphygmomanometers - an audit in general practice
• The use of herbal medicines for the treatment of menopausal symptoms
• GPs' views on active nutrition management for their patients
• Doctor-patient treatment goals in the management of osteoarthritis in general practice

December

• Lessons on prescribing and drug safety from the withdrawal of rofecoxib
• Presentations of abdominal pain in Australian general practice
• Chronic pelvic pain in women - assessment and management
• Biliary pain
• Colonic diverticular disease
• Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease - current concepts in management
• Referring to a child psychiatrist
• Common psychological disorders in childhood
• When should GPs prescribe SSRIs for adolescent depression?
• Acute pain and opioid seeking behaviour
• Rehabilitation in Guillian Barre syndrome
• Brain teaser: Choroidal melanoma
• Clinical challenge
• Pregnancy and ocular complications
• Failure to diagnose: appendicitis
• Educating the good GP - the 33rd William Arnold Conolly Oration
• The National Rural Faculty Bursary Essay - To promote remote: a positive approach to rural general practice
• Approaching the future of general practice - how systems thinking might help
• Recruitment in primary care research
• Haemochromatosis - a future focus for continuing education in general practice
• Reactions to adverse events among Australian and Norwegian doctors
• Clinical challenge - November answers