Bmc Fam Pract
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Comparative Study
Primary care physicians' reported use of pre-screening discussions for prostate cancer screening: a cross-sectional survey.
Professional medical organizations recommend individualized patient decision making about prostate cancer screening. Little is known about primary care physicians' use of pre-screening discussions to promote informed decision making for prostate cancer screening. The aim of this study is to explore physicians' use of pre-screening discussions and reasons why physicians would or would not try to persuade patients to be screened if they initially refuse testing. ⋯ Although guidelines recommend discussing the risks and benefits of prostate cancer screening, physicians report varying practice styles. Future research needs to consider the nature of discussions and the degree to which informed decision making is being achieved in clinical practice.
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Comparative Study
The attitude of Belgian social insurance physicians towards evidence-based practice and clinical practice guidelines.
Evidence-based medicine has broadened its scope and is starting to reach insurance medicine. Although still in its initial stages, physicians in the area of insurance medicine should keep up-to-date with the evidence on various diseases in order to correctly assess disability and to give appropriate advice about health care reimbursement. In order to explore future opportunities of evidence-based medicine to improve daily insurance medicine, there is a need for qualitative studies to better understand insurance physicians' perceptions of EBM. The present study was designed to identify the attitude of insurance physicians towards evidence-based medicine and clinical practice guidelines, and to determine their ability to access, retrieve and appraise the health evidence and the barriers for applying evidence to practice. ⋯ Although the majority of physicians were positive towards EBM and welcomed more guidelines, the use of evidence and clinical practice guidelines in insurance medicine is low at present. It is in the first place important to eradicate the perceived inertia which limits the use of EBM and to further investigate the EBM principles in the context of insurance medicine. Available high-quality evidence-based resources (at the moment mainly originating from other medical fields) need to be structured in a way that is useful for insurance physicians and global access to this information needs to be ensured.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Stemming the Tide of Antibiotic Resistance (STAR): a protocol for a trial of a complex intervention addressing the 'why' and 'how' of appropriate antibiotic prescribing in general practice.
After some years of a downward trend, antibiotic prescribing rates in the community have tended to level out in many countries. There is also wide variation in antibiotic prescribing between general practices, and between countries. There are still considerable further gains that could be made in reducing inappropriate antibiotic prescribing, but complex interventions are required. Studies to date have generally evaluated the effect of interventions on antibiotic prescribing in a single consultation and pragmatic evaluations that assess maintenance of new skills are rare. This paper describes the protocol for a pragmatic, randomized evaluation of a complex intervention aimed at reducing antibiotic prescribing by primary care clinicians. ⋯ This trial will be the first to evaluate the effectiveness of this type of theory-based, blended learning intervention aimed at reducing antibiotic prescribing by primary care clinicians. Novel aspects include feedback of practice level data on antimicrobial resistance and prescribing, use of principles from motivational interviewing, training in enhanced communication skills that incorporates context-bound experience and reflection, and using antibiotic dispensing over one year (as opposed to antibiotic prescribing in a single consultation) as the main outcome.
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The growing prevalence of diabetes and heightened awareness of the benefits of early and intensive disease management have increased service demands and expectations not only of primary care physicians but also of diabetes specialists. While research has addressed issues related to referral into specialist care, much less has been published about the transition from diabetes specialists back to primary care. Understanding the concerns of family physicians related to discharge of diabetes care from specialist centers can support the development of strategies that facilitate this transition and result in broader access to limited specialist services. This study was undertaken to explore primary care physician (PCP) perspectives and concerns related to reassuming responsibility for diabetes care after referral to a specialized diabetes center. ⋯ This study underlines the breadth of PCP concerns related to transition of diabetes care and the importance of this topic to them. While tools that promote timely information flow and care planning are cornerstones to successful transition, and may be sufficient for some practitioners, appropriately resourced decision support and education strategies should also be available to enhance PCP capacity and readiness to resume diabetes care after referral to a specialist center. Characteristics of the patient-care provider relationship that impact discharge were identified and are worthy of further research.
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Fax referral services that connect smokers to state quitlines have been implemented in 49 U.S. states and territories and promoted as a simple solution to improving smoker assistance in medical practice. This study is an in-depth examination of the systems-level changes needed to implement and sustain a fax referral program in primary care. ⋯ Establishing sustainable linkages to quitline services in clinical sites requires knowledge of existing patterns of care and tailored organizational changes to ensure new systems are prioritized, easily integrated into current office routines, formally assigned to specific staff members, and supported by internal systems that ensure adequate tracking and follow up of smokers. Ongoing staff training and patient self-management techniques are also needed to ease the introduction of new programs and increase their acceptability to smokers.