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

Insights from the Oxford International Primary Care Research Leadership Programme

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by Dr Alyson Huntley
Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol
and
Dr Sarah Tonkin-Crine
Health Psychologist
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

Two individuals are supported by the NIHR School for Primary Care Research (NIHR SPCR) to attend the Oxford Leadership Programme every year. This year researchers Drs Alyson Huntley from the Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol and Sarah Tonkin-Crine, from the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford attended the first week of events at St Hughs’ College, Oxford.

As cohort#12 of the International Primary Care Research Leadership Programme we were lucky to stay at St Hugh’s College, Oxford during a very hot and sunny week in July. After arriving at the college on Sunday afternoon we were given our timetable and a list of our cohort members spanning the UK, Catalonia and … Read more

Confessions of a NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellow

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by Dr Lesley Wye
Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care

 

For 25 years, I have been a frustrated researcher. Like many, I came into the field of research to make a difference. But as the years passed, I realised that research had little influence on healthcare policy making or practice. I wanted to do something, so in 2009 I applied for a NIHR post-doctoral fellowship to skill up research teams to make a bigger impact. The feedback on my (unsuccessful) application was that researchers just had to publish in the BMJ and things would change (if only!).

Imagine my delight when a few short years later, the NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellowship scheme was launched. Its aim was to create a “cadre of knowledge mobilisers”, proficient both in the practice and research of knowledge mobilisation (or ways of sharing knowledge). In 2014, I became one of them.… Read more

We need to think about treatment journeys when evaluating complex interventions

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by Dr Katrina Turner
Senior Lecturer
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@DrKMTurner

 

Most clinical trials are pragmatic in nature and aim to assess the effectiveness of a new treatment against ‘treatment as usual’. When interpreting trial results, researchers tend to focus primarily on what treatment participants in different trial arms received. This may be difficult in the usual care arm, as this arm is often poorly defined, whereas the intervention arm is often clearly defined prior to the trial starting. In addition, this focus is very narrow. Treatment is a process and patients’ experiences of accessing and receiving care could also influence their treatment outcomes, and thus the trial’s results.

A paper recently published in Trials  highlights that differences do exist between the experiences of participants randomised to usual care and intervention arms. These differences relate not only to what treatment participants receive, but also how they access and … Read more

Safety-netting advice: my experience as an Academic Foundation Programme doctor

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by Dr Peter Edwards
Research Associate/Academic Foundation Year 2 doctor
Centre for Academic Primary Care

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Patients can deteriorate rapidly.

I know this from working in both general practice and as a hospital doctor in A&E.

During the early stages of an illness it can be difficult for even the most experienced healthcare professionals to determine whether a patient has a minor self-limiting illness or is harbouring a more serious condition. In addition, growing problems such as antibiotic resistance and multimorbidity mean that sometimes even when a doctor makes a correct diagnosis, patients do not always get better with the first round of treatment and may require further medical help.

We cannot, and it is not clinically appropriate, to admit everyone to hospital to observe them until they feel 100% better.

That is why it is important that healthcare professionals provide patients with safety-netting advice. Safety-netting … Read more

Measuring outcomes in primary care

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by Dr Mairead MurphyDr Mairead Murphy
Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care

With ninety percent of patient interaction with health services going through primary care, it’s not surprising that primary care clinicians and researchers try to figure out ways to improve primary care services. Interventions are many and varied, and result in important questions about their effectiveness. Do electronic consultations offer a good service to patients? If GPs introduce advice on healthy lifestyles into the consultation, does it make patients healthier? What about increasing the duration of GP appointments to ten minutes – does this improve outcomes for patients? Or ensuring that patients always see the same named doctor? Or painting the waiting room green?

Questions like these are normally answered by administration of a generic patient-reported questionnaire. By comparing the responses of groups of patients (say those with eight minute consultations and those with ten minute consultations), researchers can … Read more

Why healthcare services have a problem with gambling

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Dr Sean Cowlishaw
Dr Sean Cowlishaw, Research Fellow at the Centre for Academic Primary Care

by Dr Sean Cowlishaw, University of Bristol

I have a problem with gambling. There’s not enough of it.

That was the admission from billionaire Steve Wynn, a major figure in the casino industry, speaking at a recent gambling research conference in (where else?) Las Vegas. And sure, it made for a good quote. But it’s also a rather glib dismissal of a serious issue that affects many thousands of people across the world.

The UK certainly has a problem with gambling. At least it has since 2007, when laws were changed to allow for huge growth in gambling opportunities and exposure. It has been hard to ignore the subsequent explosion in industry advertising, which increased by around 500% between 2007 and 2013. By contrast, you may have missed the increased numbers of high intensity electronic gambling … Read more

Why GPs should teach

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by Simon ThorntonSimon Thornton
GP Engagement Lead
Centre for Academic Primary Care

‘Encourage more GP practices to teach medical students‘.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? That was the brief for me starting as GP Engagement Lead in September 2016. Teaching is something I’m passionate about and is one of the highlights of my week in practice. It’s always a good day at work when I’ve had students with me and I love to share my enthusiasm for teaching with other GPs.

However, encouraging GPs to take on new work, as exciting and rewarding as it is, is difficult at a time of unprecedented workload and pressure in general practice. Enter ‘Step up and Teach’ – a campaign we’re running to highlight the benefits to practices of teaching medical students. The question we want practices to ask themselves is ‘can we afford not to teach?’.

Reasons to teach

We already know … Read more

‘Researchers: To make an impact, write less and talk more!’

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by Lesley Wye
Knowledge Mobilisation Fellow & Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care

I have been a researcher for over two decades. In that time, lamentations about the limited influence of research evidence have grown. But I think we researchers are largely to blame. We steadfastly insist on disseminating our knowledge in ways that we know don’t work.

Researchers usually write scientific papers, because publication is a key career performance metric. But scientific papers are read and digested by other scientists, not those who can act on our findings. Our ethnographic study showed how and why research doesn’t reach policymakers, like healthcare commissioners.

We found that local healthcare commissioners cannot retrieve papers from many scientific journals, as they often do not have passwords or subscriptions. Although open access publication helps, commissioners usually use Google, where scientific papers often do not appear – even if open access. If a … Read more