Knowledge and interpretation of GP literature

Firstly we shall consider an approach to the questions designed to test your knowledge and interpretation of general practice literature.

Preparatory reading needs to be broad. Stick to main stream journals such as the BMJ and the BJGP, with supplementation from books and other journals. RCGP Occasional Papers, national guidelines are worth noting as possible question areas. Editorials and recurrent themes in the BMJ and BJGP are good indicators of possible questions. So too is emerging evidence on any important area that would suggest adoption of a new management approach - a recent example would have been the trials of lipid-lowering treatments. Having identified topics as important and possible questions you need to check back on previous literature to get the background information needed to answer these questions well. Often the references given at the end of an editorial or review of a topic will provide all you need. Some topics will need a more organised search of the literature. It will help to develop basic literature searching skills and, if possible, share this searching for material between fellow members of a small study group. When searching literature bases, start with those covering reviews such as The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews before using the more complex Medline searches. In this way you might well strike gold with minimum time and effort.

An important principle in preparing for this exam is to concentrate on the important and common problems of general practice. Simply reading all of the last n months BMJs is not a good strategy for achieving this.

You will be tested or your ability to:

Most examiners are ordinary GPs who simply do not have time to read outside the areas relevant to their work and resist inclusion of questions irrelevant to mainstream practice. If you get really stuck with a question, try and construct an accurate factual (and not an inaccurate literature based) answer.

28 December 2006