RCSI Professor Tom Fahey, Head of the Department of General Practice and Principal Investigator of the HRB Centre for Primary Care Research, has delivered the annual James MacKenzie Lecture at the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP).

This annual lecture is given on a topic that relates to an aspect of clinical medicine, and RCGP is the UK’s largest postgraduate training body with over 50,000 members. The James MacKenzie Lecture is one of three nominated lectures at RCGP, and Professor Fahey is the second Irish GP to give this lecture. 

Professor Fahey’s lecture, titled Why evidence still matters to general practice, focused on how GPs could best make evidence-based decisions and how it improves patient outcomes. During his talk, Professor Fahey demonstrated how Irish GPs developed evidence-based policies to reduce potentially inappropriate prescribing.

Speaking of his award Professor Fahey said, “It is an honour to be asked to give the James MacKenzie Lecture at the RCGP. It is a reflection on the help and input from many colleagues in the Department of General Practice in RCSI and the HRB Centre for Primary Care Research and more widely from academic colleagues in all Irish Universities.”

Professor Fahey’s main research focus has been in terms of evidence-based practice in primary care, with particular emphasis on medicines management, clinical prediction rules and use of decision support and decision aids in relation to implementation of clinical evidence and shared decision making with patients in primary care.

You can watch Prof. Fahey’s lecture here.