How gut feeling guides clinician treatment decisions and why it’s not always enough

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by Sophie Turnbull
PhD Student
Centre for Academic Primary Care

 

Clinician intuition and gut feelings are often talked about in health care but are largely mysterious. Clinicians describe just knowing that there was something wrong with a patient but not exactly how they came to that conclusion.

In a recent study we aimed to unpick how clinicians form their gut feelings, how they use them to influence treatment decisions, and whether their gut feeling was good at predicting whether a child with infectious cough would get sicker in the 30 days after seeing them.

Using gut feeling to predict outcome in children with infectious cough

Infectious cough in children is the most common problem managed by health services internationally.  Although the majority of children get better on their own, a small proportion end up hospital with a serious illness. Clinicians do not always find it easy to establish … Read more

Why the annual winter health crisis could be solved in homes, not hospitals

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by Professor Richard Morris
Professor in Medical Statistics
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@richard2morris

 

As winter continues, so does the usual soul searching about the state of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Images of ambulances backing up outside emergency departments and patients lying on trolleys in corridors haunt politicians and the public alike.

Demand on the NHS, which is always high, increases over the coldest of seasons, when threats to health are greatest. Generally, more than 20,000 extra deaths occur from December to March than in any other four-month period in England and Wales. That number varies considerably, however – from 17,460 in 2013-4 to 43,850 in 2014-5 (which was not even a particularly cold winter). And there has been no evidence of a decreasing trend since the early 1990s, despite the national flu immunisation programme.

The percentage increase in deaths seen each winter in England and Wales … Read more

How important are informal supporters of women experiencing domestic violence?

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by Dr Alison Gregory
Research Fellow (Traumatised and Vulnerable Populations)
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@DV_Bristol

 

“How important are informal supporters of women experiencing domestic violence?”: “Very” – a simple answer to a complicated question. The bottom line, in terms of statistics, is that if survivors disclose their situation to anyone, it will most likely be to informal supporters (friends, relatives, neighbours and colleagues) rather than professionals.1 And this is true across the world, with research indicating that sometimes a disclosure to an informal supporter happens alongside a disclosure to a professional, but frequently this is not the case.2-5 In addition, it is not unusual for informal supporters to witness abusive behaviours, but commonly they are uncertain about what exactly it is that they are seeing, in particular, what it means, and what their role in the situation should be.6 ,7

Why are informal

… Read more

Struggling to write? Start your own writers’ retreat!

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by Dr Jessica Watson
NIHR Doctoral Senior Clinical Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@drjessicawatson

 

Have you ever planned to do some writing, only to find yourself distracted by emails and ‘urgent’ tasks? Do you find you have a growing list of unpublished papers and grant proposals to write? Does it feel as if there is never enough time to get going with your writing?

As academics, writing is arguably our most important task. The mantra ‘publish or perish’ is not just a matter of prestige and a means to academic career progression. Nor is it simply about keeping our University rankings within the Research Excellence Framework. It is an ethical imperative.

Most medical research is funded either through taxpayers’ money or through charitable donations and relies on the trust and goodwill of voluntary research participants. This is both a privilege and responsibility. We must ensure that money … Read more

Why doctors need to improve the way we discuss assisted dying

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Dr Paul Teed
PhD candidate
Centre for Academic Primary Care 
University of Bristol
@DrPaulTeed

Assisted dying can be a divisive and polarising subject. But there is one aspect on which most people probably agree – the need to improve the conversations people have about death.

At the moment, there is uncertainty in the UK regarding what people – especially health professionals – can and cannot say when the topic of assisted dying comes up. Conversation can become especially stilted when it turns to patients obtaining the medical documentation required for an assisted death abroad.

The situation requires clarification. Currently, if a doctor in the UK writes a specific report to help with an assisted death abroad (three organisations in Switzerland accept UK citizens), the General Medical Council (GMC) may view this as a “fitness to practice” issue.

However, if a doctor provides copies of medical records, even with the … Read more

How we learned to love doing workshops

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by Jessica Roy
Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@DV_Bristol

The prospect of running a three-hour conference workshop can provoke anxiety even for the most seasoned conference-goer. Last month, I was a member of the IRIS+ research team, led by Dr Eszter Szilassy, that attended and presented a workshop at the Second European Conference of Domestic Violence in Porto, Portugal.

The conference brings together researchers, practitioners and policy makers from all corners of the globe to discuss, debate and exchange knowledge regarding domestic violence and abuse (DVA).

For context, the IRIS+ project is a training and intervention programme to support clinicians (GPs and nurses) to identify, document and refer female and male victims and perpetrators of DVA, as well as their children, to our dedicated specialist support service.

Before presenting, we had concerns that our workshop might not attract an audience, partly because we thought our topic … Read more

How do we teach clinicians to talk about the end of life?

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by Dr Lucy Selman
Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@Lucy_Selman

 

In a systematic review published this month, we identified 153 communication skills training interventions for generalists in end of life care. In randomised controlled trials, training improved showing empathy and discussing emotions in simulated interactions (i.e. with actor patients) but evidence of effect on clinician behaviours during real patient interactions, and on patient-reported outcomes, was inconclusive.

The global increase in the proportion of older people and length of life means providing end of life care is now increasingly the responsibility of generalist as well as specialist palliative care providers. But many clinicians find communicating about end of life issues challenging: how do you best discuss imminent mortality, limited treatment options, what to expect when you’re dying, or a patient’s preferences for end of life care?

When this communication is done poorly, or not done at all, … Read more

Worried about asking people to take part in research? Don’t be!

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by Dr Alison Gregory
Research Fellow (Traumatised and Vulnerable Populations), Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@AlisonGregory73

When I first became a health researcher, I felt that people would see taking part in research as a bother, a pain, or a waste of their time and that, by association, they would see me as akin to a nuisance caller, intent on coercing them into some unwanted activity. Thankfully, after 10 years doing research, it’s become apparent to me that this is far from the truth.

For a start, the tentativeness with which most of the researchers I know proceed as they recruit participants is anything but a hard-sell. In fact, due to necessarily stringent ethics and governance processes and practices, strict eligibility criteria, and a healthy dose of ‘only wanting to do what’s best for people’, we are possibly more in danger of being talked out of taking … Read more

Multimorbidity could cause a healthcare crisis – here’s what we can do about it

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by Professor Chris Salisbury
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@prof_tweet

 

Multimorbidity is one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare. In recent years, a succession of research studies have shown that people with multiple health problems are more likely to have a worse quality of life, worse mental health and reduced life expectancy. The more health problems someone has, the more drugs they are likely to be prescribed and the more frequently they are likely to consult a GP or be admitted to hospital.

You might think this is all rather self-evident – it’s hardly a surprise that sick people get ill, take medicines and go to doctors more often than healthy people.

So why has multimorbidity become so prominent in discussions about healthcare over the last decade?

There has been an explosion in the number of research papers published on the the topic, numerous editorials and discussion … Read more