General Practice
Summary
General practice is the cornerstone of most health-care systems, providing first-contact, continuous and comprehensive care to individuals and families. Practitioners adopt a holistic perspective, integrating clinical, psychological and social dimensions while coordinating with allied professionals and secondary services. Core activities include diagnosis and management of undifferentiated symptoms, prevention and health promotion, chronic disease monitoring, minor procedures and referral to specialists when indicated. Continuity of care fosters trusting relationships that improve outcomes, enhance patient satisfaction and reduce unnecessary hospital use. General practitioners (GPs) often act as gatekeepers, directing patients to further investigations or specialist input, and they play an increasingly vital role in shared decision-making, self-management support and addressing social determinants of health in the community. Workforce shortages, growing multimorbidity and resource constraints have stimulated innovation in team-based models, digital health solutions and novel funding arrangements to sustain high-quality, accessible general practice.
Research from Nature Portfolio
No recent Nature Portfolio content available.
General Practice publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in general practice across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Gatekeeping: The role of the general practitioner in evaluating undifferentiated problems and directing patients to further investigations or specialist care.
Continuity of care: An ongoing therapeutic relationship between a patient and one or more practitioners over time, facilitating better health outcomes.
Social determinants of health (SDoH): The non-medical factors—such as housing, food security, employment and social support—that influence health outcomes and health-care utilisation.
Large language model (LLM): A type of artificial intelligence system trained on vast text corpora to process and generate human-like language, used here to extract structured data from clinical narratives.
Biopsychosocial model: A framework that incorporates biological, psychological and social factors in understanding health, illness and clinical care.
References
- General Practice Education: Context and Trends.
- Large language models to identify social determinants of health in electronic health records. npj Digital Medicine (2024).
- Implementation of a Biopsychosocial History and Physical Exam Template in the Electronic Health Record: Mixed Methods Study. JMIR Medical Education (2023).
- Effectiveness of Social Needs Screening and Interventions in Clinical Settings on Utilization, Cost, and Clinical Outcomes: A Systematic Review. Health Equity (2022).
About these summaries
This Nature Research Intelligence Topic summary is created with the cited references and a large language model. We take care to ground generated text with facts, and have systems in place to gain human feedback on the overall quality of the process in line with our AI principles. We strive to create accurate and useful summaries for people unfamiliar with the research topic and that supports this goal. These pages are a beta release and will be updated as we learn how best to help people gain value from a research topic summary.
Turn complex research questions into confident strategic decisions
When you're under pressure to set direction, justify investment, or understand your competitive position, you need more than raw data — you need trusted insights you can act on.
Benchmark your performance against global peers using robust, methodologically sound analysis.
Combine quantitative metrics with qualitative expert insight to uncover strengths, gaps and emerging opportunities.
Gain tailored, decision-ready recommendations aligned to your strategic priorities.
Talk to us to learn more about our data dashboards and bespoke strategy reports.
Grow research skills, confidence and careers with training built for every stage of the research lifecycle.
Developed with Nature Portfolio journal Editors and internationally renowned experts. Discover three ways to learn:
Self-paced, online courses in convenient bite-sized units, covering key skills across scientific writing, publishing, grant writing, data analysis, and more.
Expert trainer-led workshops with hands-on exercises and real-time feedback across core research skills, delivered via interactive group sessions.
Editor-led workshops combining core principles in writing and publishing, personalised 1:1 feedback from Nature Portfolio Editors and hands-on exercises.
Explore course catalogues and workshop agendas, enquire about the options or request institutional pricing.