PHC5303 - Challenging issues in primary care

Depressive and anxiety disorders in General Practice

1. Interpret the principal psychiatric classification system currently in use, and apply it, in conjunction with appropriate clinical reasoning skills, to determine whether or not a patient has a depressive or anxiety disorder.
2. Determine the risk factors and underlying causes of depressive and anxiety disorders, and argue how these influence treatment.
3. Devise and implement a systematic approach to assessing the severity of different types of depressive and anxiety disorders, including their morbidity and mortality.
4. Devise and implement a systematic approach to the management of depressive and anxiety disorders, which includes a synthesis of the best available evidence, in addition to considering patient wishes and circumstances, community resources and the clinician's experience.
5. Distinguish between the presentations in General Practice of different types of depressive and anxiety disorders.
6. Devise a plan for future personal practice and professional development in the diagnosis and management of patients with depressive and anxiety disorders.

Issues in General Practice prescribing

1. Discuss the Australian and international use of prescribed medication in terms of research directions, funding, rates of prescribing, the major stakeholders, the influences on prescribing and policy directions such as quality use of medicines initiatives
2. Demonstrate the use of a particular model for deciding the most appropriate therapeutic medication for a particular condition
3. Demonstrate knowledge, practice and skill in a chosen prescribing situation in general practice, including the therapeutic medications used, and the particular steps necessary for safe prescribing
4. Demonstrate critical thinking in reviewing the evidence about a medication via a planned and recorded interview with a pharmaceutical detailer
5. Create a plan for improving the quality of prescribing in your own practice or within the clinic, using audit and feedback

Chronic disease management

1. Describe the burden, distribution and determinants of chronic disease within their own country and internationally
2. Analyse the place of Primary Care (General Practice) in the management of chronic diseases with particular reference to their own country and health care system
3. Describe responses to the challenges of chronic disease management as embodied in models such as the chronic care model (Wagner) and their own country's responses to the challenges of this field
4. Evaluate their current work-place performance in managing chronic disease, utilising audit and comparison with chosen standards or guidelines
5. Plan change within the student's current work-place to improve chronic disease management, utilising their previous evaluations, known effective interventions and published guides, templates and financial modelling

Mindfulness-based stress management

1. Critically review the significant body of research linking psychological states like stress with a range of illnesses and lifestyle including disciplines within mind-body medicine such as neuroplasticity, psychoneuroimmunology and psychogenomics.
2. Critically review research demonstrating the benefits of psychological interventions like stress management and mindfulness
3. Practice the mindfulness meditation exercises in their various forms and critique their effectiveness.
4. Apply the principles of the mindfulness-based cognitive strategies and critique their effectiveness.
5. Critically reflect on their own experience of stress and ways in which they manage it.
6. Develop and implement mindfulness-based stress management in practice.
7. Demonstrate professional skills as a counsellor in mindfulness-based stress management.

Dermatology

1. Analyse how the structural components of the skin function in both healthy and diseased states
2. Demonstrate a systematic approach to generating and exploring an appropriate list of differential diagnoses, in a patient with a dermatological complaint
3. Deduce what further investigations, if any, are required, to aid diagnosis
4. Devise and implement a systematic approach to the management of dermatological disorders, which includes a synthesis of the best available evidence, patient wishes and circumstances, community resources and the clinician's experience
5. Devise a plan for future personal practice and professional development in the diagnosis and management of patients with dermatological conditions