ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights specific skills that general practitioners (GPs) might employ to manage the various consultations and explores some of the tensions around workload and occasional difficult consultations. The consultation is a private interaction between patients and their health care providers (HCPs). The consultation is currently under threat from pressures to reduce National Health Service (NHS) costs and a growing concept of the consultation as somehow inferior to other tasks and so capable of deconstruction into parts that can be delegated to other HCPs and to artificial intelligence (AI) systems. GPs are trained in several different consultation models. These models direct and explore discussions with the patient, helping create management plans and discuss expected outcomes. The chapter discusses different types of consultations related by doctors and patients over decades before discussing the consultation skills which usually provide satisfactory consultation outcomes for doctors and patients.
