Pulse managed to secure interviews with health secretary Matt Hancock and shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashcroft for our December issue ahead of the election, and we scrutinised their plans for general practice – and whether anyone is doing anything to tackle GP workload.

We also had a review of the year, looking back at major Pulse stories such as a record number of practices and our workload survey that found GPs were working 11-hour days on average.

Elsewhere, we investigate how the benefits clampdown is undermining the GP’s role, and show how more practices are achieving maximum QOF points.

In our clinical section, we have key questions on out-of-hours care, and our new ‘clinical clangers’ feature explores the problems when differentiating between cellulitis and varicose eczema.