Practitioner

Hot button issues

Each year, the Medical Council considers about 2300 complaints and notifications about medical practitioners in NSW. Complaints cover a wide range of issues, ranging from clinical care and prescribing practices through to concerns about a medical practitioner’s own...

Helping the healers: Doctors' Health Advisory Service

Everyone needs help sometime, and doctors aren’t immune! Health problems, money worries and poor work conditions all create stress that destroys personal wellbeing and happiness. Help is available. We talk to Ms Sarah Foster and Prof Garry Walter from the Doctors’...

Confidence, competence and getting it wrong!

Medical students and doctors display a range of clinical confidence. At one end of a continuum are those who appear untroubled by self-doubt. Perhaps they were the ones who as fourth-year med students took off to work in Uganda and returned with ripping yarns of...

What it means to say 'sorry'

Sometimes, things go wrong. Doctors see it every day – a dire outcome to a simple procedure, a misdiagnosis or a delay in treatment. A good doctor who’s had a bad day. A distressed patient may often just want an incident to be acknowledged. The way a doctor responds to...

Good practice: Resources for doctors

Articles to assist doctors to maintain best practice and high professional standards.

Transgender patients: Tips for treatment

Many transgender people delay or avoid seeking health care because they have had negative experiences in medical settings. Doctors who rarely treat transgender patients may feel uncertain about what language to use, how to sensitively conduct a physical examination or...

Top honours for NSW doctors

The following NSW doctors and medical researchers were recognised in the Australia Day Honours List: Companion (AC) in the General Division Professor Nicholas Joseph Talley (pictured): For eminent service to medical research, and to education in the field of...

Chlamydia: Do you know your patient's partner?

Doctors who treat a patient for a chlamydia infection must record the contact details of their patient’s partner. To minimise the risk that patients become reinfected with Chlamydia, it is acceptable practice for doctors to give their patients prescriptions for...

Opinion: Doctors must reach out to colleagues suffering in silence

Doctors and medical students have higher rates of psychological distress and attempted suicide. Medical practitioners need to reach out to each other to help, and should not be deterred by laws around the mandatory reporting of health professionals.

Codeine to be script-only

Pain is a significant health burden for many Australians, with up to one in five Australians living with chronic pain. A large proportion of the population rely on over the counter combination medicines containing codeine to manage this pain. However, from 1 February...

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