Primary Care Research & Teaching Blog – Page 14 – A blog by academics from the Centre for Academic Primary Care (CAPC), University of Bristol. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not of CAPC, the University, research funders or partners.

World Health Day 2017 – ‘Depression: let’s talk’

Posted on April 7, 2017April 7, 2017 by capcbristol

By Dr David Kessler
Reader in Primary Care
Centre for Academic Mental Health &
Centre for Academic Primary Care

There has been a transformation in social and scientific attitudes to depression in my working lifetime. It is no longer acceptable to stigmatise mental illness or psychological distress. The idea that the common mental disorders of depression and anxiety are an inescapable part of being human has been replaced by a belief that these disabling extremes of sadness and worry are treatable conditions.

Changes in the treatment of depression have been part of wider cultural changes. There is an increased openness about sadness and distress, and a widespread belief, beginning with Freud, that at the very least ‘neurotic misery can be transformed into ordinary unhappiness’. The invention of psychotherapy has spawned numerous schools and sub-disciplines, but all hold to the common belief that with help, … Read more

Why gender can’t be ignored when dealing with domestic violence

Posted on March 28, 2017 by capcbristol

by Gene Feder and Lucy Potter
Centre for Academic Primary Care

First published in The Conversation

Domestic violence is a violation of human rights with damaging social, economic and health consequences. It is any incident of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse. That abuse can be psychological, emotional, physical, sexual and financial.

The “domestic” element refers to abuse between people aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality. Men, women or transgender people in straight, gay or lesbian relationships can perpetrate or experience it. So does this mean domestic violence is gender neutral? Is gender irrelevant to prevention efforts and to responding to survivors’ needs? We do not think so.

Globally, direct experience of being subjected to domestic violence is greater among women then among men. In the UK, 27% of women and 13% of men … Read more

The doctor will Skype you now: the value of telehealth in managing long-term conditions

Posted on March 28, 2017 by capcbristol

by Dr Padraig Dixon
Senior Research Associate in Health Economics
Centre for Academic Primary Care

People are increasingly living with long-term health conditions. Management of these conditions is expensive, and their increased prevalence challenges health system sustainability and current service models. Can alternative models of care meet the needs of patients with long-term conditions at an acceptable cost?

One growing area of healthcare that could serve as a replacement or adjunct to traditional care models is telehealth, which is the remote provision of healthcare by a variety of communication tools. Telehealth advocates argue that the wider use of technology and a greater reliance on self-management in supporting patients with long-term conditions may produce the same or better health outcomes, but at a lower cost, than traditional care modalities. Is this optimism justified, and might telehealth be good value for the NHS?

Recent work, funded by the National Institute for Health … Read more

What is the ‘3D approach’ for managing multiple long-term conditions?

Posted on March 13, 2017April 10, 2017 by capcbristol

by Dr Mei-See Man
Trial Manager
Centre for Academic Primary Care

The 3D study, led by researchers from the Centre for Academic Primary Care (CAPC), is examining a new approach for GP practices to manage patients with multiple long-term health problems.

Meeting a need

Existing treatment is based on guidelines for each separate condition meaning that patients often attend multiple appointments for each disease which can be repetitive, inconvenient and inefficient. They see different nurses and doctors who may give conflicting advice. These patients frequently get depressed and they also sometimes complain that no-one treats them as a ‘whole person’ or takes their views into account.

The 3D approach was developed by patients and GPs together to address these issues. Based around patient-centred care, the approach focuses on three ‘D’s: Depression, Drugs and the patient’s Dimensions of health, such as their quality of life, priorities and … Read more

How do we support GPs providing end of life care?

Posted on March 10, 2017March 12, 2017 by capcbristol

by Dr Lucy Selman
Research Fellow (Qualitative Research in Randomised Trials)
Centre for Academic Primary Care

GPs are vital to the delivery of end of life care. They coordinate care, provide generalist palliative care, help prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, and, in England, commission local health and social care services. Crucially, they help shift care from hospitals to the community, which is where most people would prefer to die.

But providing good care at the end of life is not always straightforward. There’s evidence that GPs can find it challenging, and that the quality of end of life care by GPs can be problematic. The Royal College of General Practitioners and the House of Commons Health Committee therefore recognise the urgent need for evidence-based education in end of life care for GPs. However, the evidence base for GP training in end of life care is unclear, and no rigorous evaluations … Read more

Translating research into an art performance

Posted on January 16, 2017 by capcbristol

by Dr Johanna Spiers
Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care

I am a qualitative health psychologist. That’s who I’ve been for about eight years.

However, before I even knew what that term meant, I was several other things: a writer, a performer, a poet. I am drawn to words, and to the stories that they form. This is why I am passionate about qualitative research. I also love performance, and believe it is a fantastic mechanism for powerfully communicating important messages about humanity.

On my arrival at the University of Bristol, I was therefore thrilled to learn that the project I would be working on with Principal Investigator Ruth Riley included a collaboration with a performance artist, who would be communicating our findings about GPs’ mental health to an audience. This performance was to happen as part of the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute’s (EBI) Feel It Festival. … Read more

A Painful Silence: bringing domestic violence into conversation

Posted on January 5, 2017January 16, 2017 by capcbristol

by Gene Feder, Professor of Primary Care
and
Lucy Potter, Academic Clinical Fellow in Social and Community Medicine
Centre for Academic Primary Care

Seek the truth, not what is comfortable. Seek the real, not the easy.
— Gerald May

Talking about domestic violence and abuse can be uncomfortable. Avoiding talking about uncomfortable subjects keeps them hidden, fails to challenge injustice and arguably colludes with perpetration. We have a responsibility to shine a light into these dark corners.

In the Centre for Academic Primary Care at the University of Bristol we conduct research on improving the health care response to domestic violence and abuse. We have measured the prevalence and impact of domestic violence in patients in general practice and sexual health services; developed and rigorously tested training for doctors and nurses in general practice to ask about DVA and link patients disclosing abuse to specialist domestic violence advocates; run programmes … Read more

Are some patients more equal than others? Looking back at the Cancer Drugs Fund

Posted on May 13, 2016May 13, 2016 by capcbristol

by Dr Padraig Dixon
Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care

Imagine being given £400m of taxpayers’ money to spend on drugs for the benefit of NHS cancer patients. How would you decide which therapies to fund? Would you decide that all cancer patients should benefit equally, or would you decide to spend more on particular types of cancer, or on particular types of patient?

These issues were confronted by the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), the 2014/15 expenditures of which were £416m (against a budget of £280m). The CDF was created to make available to patients in England cancer drugs not recommended by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on the basis of cost-effectiveness, not yet appraised by NICE or which were being used outside market authorisations.

The effects of the CDF on population health are controversial: one estimate is that the CDF has caused five … Read more

Creating a data archive of GP consultations – the motivations and challenges

Posted on April 15, 2016April 19, 2016 by capcbristol

By Dr Rebecca Barnes
Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care

Nearly 14 years ago in summer school at University of California Santa Barbara, Professor Don Zimmerman provided my introduction to the analysis of institutional, in particular medical, interaction.

Those studies set the benchmark for my own research ambitions but the main obstacle I faced was getting access to data.

For all the right reasons, medical consultations data are challenging to collect. Where ethical approval is in place for reuse it is often restricted to the original research team. Sometimes retrospective approvals for reuse of existing data are possible but even then, consultations data that has been collected without reuse in mind is often of variable quality; the process of data collection and participant characteristics are not well-documented, recordings can be incomplete and they are often audio-only.

The idea for the Primary Care Consultations Archive was born with this … Read more

Listening to the child’s voice in research on domestic violence and abuse

Posted on April 13, 2016April 13, 2016 by capcbristol

By Lisa Arai
Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care

Anybody who has worked on a systematic review will know you spend a lot of time thinking about the type of research papers to include in your review and those you will exclude. Tightly defined inclusion criteria, as well as critical appraisal, an explicit synthesis stage and measures to reduce reviewer bias (such as inter-rater checks), are what distinguish systematic from traditional reviews (a point usefully made by Mark Petticrew more than a decade ago, when he sought – among other things – to debunk the notion that systematic reviews are simply larger versions of traditional reviews).

Over many years teaching research methods, I’ve noticed students often regard this early stage of the review process as troublesome. It’s often approached with an uncertainty that, if not properly resolved, can render the review unwieldy. Or its significance might be underestimated; … Read more