Crossing the Line: When Personal Values Enter Clinical Decisions

Family physicians frequently face clinical decisions in which guidelines provide limited or conflicting direction. In these situations, values, emotions, and personal experience inevitably influence judgement. An unspoken question often arises: What would I do if this were my parent? This question reveals the ethical tension between professional responsibility, evidence-based practice, and personal morality, yet it…

Redesigning Access Pathways Through Digital Triage: Global Principles for Fair, Efficient and Risk-Managed Primary Care

Across the world, primary care systems are under intense pressure. Demand continues to rise, the workforce is stretched, and traditional “first come, first served” access models create inequity, inefficiency and unmanaged clinical risk. Digital triage offers a structural solution: a way to organise demand safely, prioritise care by urgency, improve equity, and provide a clearer,…

Equipping primary care teams to support bereaved patients

Bereavement is a universal human experience with significant impacts on health and wellbeing, and GPs are often the first point of contact when someone is bereaved. These conversations require a different approach from the classic problem-solving model of general practice. Whilst most people do not require specialist bereavement support, primary care teams need robust processes…

From Prompt to Practice: Hands-on Use of Artificial Intelligence in Daily Family Medicine

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are becoming increasingly accessible to clinicians, offering significant potential to support family medicine in areas such as clinical reasoning, documentation, patient communication and medical education. Despite this availability, structured training for the practical application of AI in primary care remains limited. Many family physicians and residents lack confidence in translating AI’s…

Development of new primary care focussed guidelines: a successful ESPCG process

ESPCG is being participating during the last years in the development of primary care-focused guidelines on different gastrointestinal problems (including liver and pancreas guidelines).Main learning objective from this session is to update participants on some of the most relevant primary focused guidelines in which ESPCG is being recently involved.Juan Mendive (Spain). Chair of the session.…

How Should We Identify and Manage Elderly Patients with Nutritional Disorders?

In ageing individuals, changes in bodily functions and the body's transformation process begin. With ageing, a physiological decrease in food intake occurs. The decreased sense of taste and smell associated with ageing, along with changes in appetite, prolonged gastric emptying, and hormonal changes, lead to physiological anorexia and associated weight loss, which predispose older individuals…

Collaborative multidisciplinary primary care teams: sharing experiences across Europe

Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) are increasingly essential to delivering accessible and high-quality primary care, particularly in rural and underserved areas facing workforce shortages, fragmentation of services and rising multimorbidity. Across Europe, MDTs have developed through diverse organisational and funding models. However, without structured planning and alignment with population needs, MDTs may inadvertently reinforce inequalities or reduce…

Setting research priorities for the WONCA Europe Social Prescribing and Community Orientation (SPCO) Special Interest Group

The World Health Organisation defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Historically the focus of healthcare delivery has been on diagnosing and treating disease, however there is a growing interest in Social Prescribing. Social Prescribing is a means to refer people with social,…