New guidance for GPwSI in Dermatology and Skin Surgery
Over the past 18 months a number of guidelines have been produced to assist in the delivery of quality GPwSI care, these are as follows:

• The generic document ‘Implementing care closer to home - convenient quality care for patients Parts 1-3’ can be found on www.pcc.nhs.uk/173.php
  

• The disease specific document ‘Guidance and Competencies for the provision of services using GPs with Special Interests (GPwSI) - Dermatology and Skin Surgery’ can be found on http://www.pcc.nhs.uk/uploads/pwsis/gpwsis_dermatology.pdf

• Producing care pathways for patients with skin lesions can be found at http://www.18weeks.nhs.uk/public/default.aspx?load=Pathways#

• The NICE document ‘Improving Outcomes for People with Skin Tumours including Melanoma’ can be found at http://www.nice.org.uk/page.aspx?o=csgstim&c=skin

Skin surgery and the development of community skin cancer services
For more information please refer to the section on skin surgery – this is currently under development

Practical advice on setting up a new service
Please click here to open up the document 

Models of care and individual experiences
Please click here to download your service / experiences and view others services. 

Database, audit and research
In order for the PCDS to support GPwSI it is important that we know as much about you as possible and we would be grateful if you take time to use the links below:

• Database: The development of a database is invaluable to enable us to assess the activity of GPwSI, to inform you of any relevant educational meetings and to aid in research. If you are a GPwSI please click on the link at the bottom of this page to enter your details on to our database.
  
  
• Getting in contact with other local GPwSI – There may be other GPwSI working in your region. They may be able to assist you in setting up a new service or in forming a local network. If you email the PCDS, Carol and Siobhan have access to the database and will be able to put you in contact with relevant individuals.
  
  
• Audit & Research
  It is important for primary care to have as much information about your GPwSI service as possible. To this end it would be helpful if you could send any audit/research about your service to the PCDS (see Contact us) and mark it for the attention of Dr Tim Cunliffe.