Tips for GP trainees working in respiratory medicine

Abstract

Respiratory medicine has a lot to offer the trainee. It’s a great mixture of both acute and chronic illnesses, from the young with asthma and pneumonia to older patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer. There are practical procedures aplenty, and you will get very good at arterial blood gases (ABGs) and get the chance to perform invasive procedures such as chest drains; often as the ‘Respiratory SHO’, you get bleeped to insert them for other teams. There’s a lot of the social side too, and that invariably includes relatives and the emotion that goes with a new diagnosis of cancer or just the