Overview
- Posters have been delivered to all 6,170 GP practices this week, with letters from Health Secretary Wes Streeting and NHS England’s national medical director Claire Fuller urging surgeries to display and follow the approach.
- Jess’s Rule asks GP teams to take a fresh look when a patient has had three appointments without a substantiated diagnosis or when symptoms have escalated.
- In practice, clinicians are encouraged to arrange in-person reviews if earlier contacts were remote, perform thorough examinations, order further tests, seek second opinions and make referrals where appropriate.
- The Royal College of GPs collaborated with the Brady family on learning resources, and research cited by the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation shows half of 16–24-year-olds needed three or more GP interactions before a cancer diagnosis, versus one in five overall.
- The initiative, named for Jessica Brady, has drawn strong support from primary care and her CEDAR Trust, and it has prompted calls for similar adoption in Wales, which has not yet implemented the scheme.