Recorded at the Family Doctors Europe 2020 Virtual Conference

One of the major challenges in generalist practice is to be competent in many areas of clinical knowledge, procedural skills, and evidence based options for testing and treating. Another is to link all of this ‘doctor’ agenda with the needs, views and unique situation of each person who is their patient. While it is a recurring pleasure of being a GP to enter again and again into the challenge of putting the person at the centre of our practice, we also have to manage our time, our own emotional and intellectual capacity, and offset the needs of the patient in front of us with the many who also need our help. And we know that overload, whether at an individual or systemic level, is a major cause of error and also professional burnout. The additional uncertainties and consequent safety measures which have been introduced by the COVID19 pandemic have added to our dilemmas – how to make safe diagnoses and be patient centred in the remote consultation setting, and how to retain the breadth of our best practice while meeting the added demands of the new context. This keynote will attempt to move beyond these dilemmas to share some lived experience and principles that can guide us to achieve both goals.