ABSTRACT
In general practice, the reason that the patient has walked into your consulting room is that he or she has taken the decision to consult a doctor. This is very different from hospitals, where a patient can only be seen by referral from another doctor (with the exception of accident and emergency/ casualty and certain other self-referral clinics). In
general practice, the patient makes the decision to see the doctor and the reasons vary widely, as discussed in Chapter 7 on common illnesses in general practice. In this chapter, we consider the processes of making diagnoses and managing patients with acute problems. The principles of patient diagnosis and management are common to many clinical situations; here we focus on those that are of special significance or different in the primary care setting.
