For us, practice should be not simply where ideas get applied, but where questions begin.
Inspired by the way a prism refracts light into many colours, we believe that diverse perspectives create richer understanding. Our members come from different professional backgrounds and healthcare systems, spanning general practice, psychiatry, pharmacy, anthropology, and more.
Generalist medicine looks different depending on the system and culture it sits within, and that’s why we think it's important to remain grounded in real clinical practice. Rather than exploring generalist medicine in the abstract, we start with problems that reflect the actual complexity of clinical encounters - multimorbidity, diagnostic uncertainty, differentiated presentations, competing priorities, and difficult decisions under real-world constraints.
We draw on real cases and experiences from different countries and healthcare systems, and explore how the same clinical problem is understood and managed differently depending on context.
By learning from and with one another in this way, we aim to deepen our understanding of whole-person care and strengthen primary care across countries and contexts.
How it all started
Our collaboration began in October 2024, when a group of Japanese clinical academics and researchers visited the UK to share insights into how primary care systems, medical education, and generalist practice work in different contexts.
The collaboration included workshops, seminars, and meetings to explore opportunities for collaboration, along with the overlaps, similarities, and differences between the UK and Japanese primary care contexts. The enthusiasm for this exchange of ideas led our teams to keep meeting online, to keep up to date with the latest international research, education, and CPD developments in general practice. That appetite for learning is what led us to found the PRISM Network - to build on this exchange and share it with a wider international audience.
Watch the video below to hear more about how it all began.
Our goals
1
Practice, context, and collaboration
Our goals follow the shape of our own thinking – grounded in the clinic room, working outward toward the community that sustains it, to ultimately reach the broader, international context.
2
Stay grounded in real clinical practice
We use real cases of complexity, multimorbidity, uncertainty and difficult clinical decisions from different countries and health systems as the starting point for our own questions and scholarship.
3
Compare practical wisdom across systems
We look at how generalist clinicians develop, use and maintain practical wisdom across diverse healthcare systems and cultures.
4
Apply and develop conceptual frameworks
In context, to deepen understanding of the doctor-patient relationship, physician burden and GP professional identity - and to strengthen support for clinicians and learners, as well as patients.
5
Support clinicians and learners, robustly
We build international collaborations and sustain a community of practice not only to advance knowledge, but to provide clinicians and learners everywhere with more robust, meaningful support – through our collaborative network, and shared learning-in-context across different primary care systems.
What we do
How our community of practice has worked together so far
Compare real cases across contexts
We bring real clinical cases and experiences from different countries and health systems, and explore how the same kind of problem is understood and managed differently across contexts.
Joint seminars
We run joint CPD seminars, to learn directly from one another's clinical and teaching practice, and we share these with the wider community.
Shared writing, research & scholarship
We write up what we learn together - from working papers and joint editorials to shared case studies - so the learning from our collaboration can itself be useful to others.
A growing international network
Our members span general practice, psychiatry, pharmacy and anthropology, and more, across the UK, Ireland, Japan, and beyond - an open, evolving community of practice.
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