“Together, we are an ocean.”

As we move into yet another new year, despite all the innovations and other examples of our species overcoming multiple challenges during the pandemic, we can be forgiven for looking back on our recent past and hoping that for all of the world’s population the year to come will be better than the two years that have preceded it.

In this editorial I therefore simply want to emphasise the collective strength of primary care.

Covid 19 unavoidably forced patients, clinicians, learners and educators into isolation from colleagues and loved ones for extended periods of time. Sometimes the isolation was geographical and brought about by remote consulting with patients and remote teaching of learners, but sometimes that isolation was simply created between individuals by the barriers introduced by personal protective equipment (PPE).

However, ours is a set of disciplines that makes the collective whole greater than the sum of its parts whenever it works towards a common set of goals. Despite the many challenges, primary care togetherness has still managed to permeate the majority of workplaces across the globe and, although we were already aware of it, has re-emphasised how important the pre-pandemic teamwork was and how much our patients and learners are now benefitting from that teamwork in difficult circumstances as the pandemic continues to unfold.

I am reminded by this collective endeavour of the thoughtful words of a Japanese writer …

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean [1].

Ryunosuke Satoro

This journal is proud to be associated with WONCA, the World Organization of Family Doctors and the global ‘drops’ of Primary Care WONCA represents have truly been the ocean on which healthcare has floated over the last two years of the pandemic.

I am therefore especially pleased to present this first of the year edition of Education for Primary Care to you because it contains a leading article co-authored by a senior member of WONCA, presents papers authored or co-authored, in addition to Primary Care doctors, by people whose original clinical role was or still is as an occupational psychologist, pharmacists, a dentist, a dietician, a respiratory physician and an infectious diseases specialist. What valuable insights such a broad base of contributors offers us. Add to this the fact that some of this month’s contributors speak to us from Canada, the USA and Nigeria and you can see why I am proud to be the Editor of this journal, why the quality and quantity of submissions to this journal continues to rise alongside increasing citations and downloads, and why I am also proud to be part of such a far reaching and richly diverse educational and clinical community. Please immerse yourself in this issue and enjoy all that our excellent contributors have to offer us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).