RACGP’s Red Book: Supporting preventive care in everyday general practice
Primary healthcare clinicians play a central role in championing preventive care that delivers long-term patient health outcomes and reduces the burden of chronic disease.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Guidelines for preventive activities in general practice (the Red Book) is a free resource that has been designed to provide general practitioners (GPs) with practical, up-to-date guidance that supports preventive care.
What is RACGP’s Red Book?
The Red Book contains clear, evidence-based recommendations with a focus on asymptomatic patients. It has been designed to inform clinical decision-making during routine patient consultations.
Widely accepted as the main guide to the provision of preventive care in Australian general practice, the Red Book is one of the most accessed resources produced by the RACGP. It provides a much-needed and valued synthesis of the many aspects of preventive care relevant to our patient population.
—The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners,
Deliver preventative care to a diverse range of patients
Primary healthcare clinicians in the Brisbane South PHN region will often tailor preventive care to both:
individual patient needs
population groups who are statistically are at higher risk of disease and who are less likely to receive preventive care.
The Red Book aligns with national priorities to improve health equity and includes guidance to help support GPs who provide care for patients from First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
Ways of integrating prevention into everyday general practice
The Red Book can support GPs to embed prevention into everyday practice, offering clinically relevant guidance that can be applied at the point of care.
The structure of the Red Book’s content allows GPs to quickly identify appropriate interventions based on a patient’s age, risk profile, and clinical context. Lifecycle charts are created to support implementation of the Red Book. It’s beneficial for GPs and nurses to save a chart on their desktop for easy reference.
MedicalDirector and Best Practice software also have a preventative health section in each patient’s file that aligns with the RACGP Red Book. This function supports practitioners to ensure relevant and appropriate preventive care is offered to each patient.
See how to enable preventative health notifications for:
Support for implementing prevention-focused patient screening in your practice
Brisbane South PHN works to support primary healthcare professionals through resources designed to strengthen preventative care. A key component of this is through quality improvement support. Learn more on our website, or participate in a self-paced quality improvement activity. Each self-paced activity provides step-by-step guidance and resources for practices on screening and prevention-focused strategies for across topics such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart diseases, diabetes and cervical screening.
Our General Practice Quality Improvement team and Digital Health team can provide tailored support for local general practices by request. Reach out to us at [email protected] to learn more and request a practice visit from one of the team.