Primary health care research & development
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Prim Health Care Res Dev · Jul 2012
Health-care sector and complementary medicine: practitioners' experiences of delivering acupuncture in the public and private sectors.
The aim was to identify similarities and differences between private practice and the National Health Service (NHS) in practitioners' experiences of delivering acupuncture to treat pain. We wished to identify differences that could affect patients' experiences and inform our understanding of how trials conducted in private clinics relate to NHS clinical practice. ⋯ The perceived effectiveness of acupuncture was described consistently and participants felt they did (or would) deliver acupuncture similarly in NHS and in private practice. In both the sectors, patients sought acupuncture as a last resort and acupuncturist-patient relationships were deemed important. Acupuncture availability differed across sectors: in the NHS it was constrained by Trust policies and in the private sector by patients' financial resources. There were greater opportunities for autonomous practice in the private sector and regulation was important for different reasons in each sector. In general, NHS practitioners had Western-focussed training and also used conventional medical techniques, whereas private practitioners were more likely to have Traditional Chinese training and to practise other complementary therapies in addition to acupuncture. Future studies should examine the impact of these differences on patients' clinical outcomes.
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Prim Health Care Res Dev · Jul 2012
Exploring attitudes and practices of General Practice staff towards offers of opportunistic screening for chlamydia: a UK survey.
This study applied a theory-based questionnaire to examine the behaviours and beliefs of all practice staff who may be involved in offering chlamydia screens to young people aged 15-25 years old. We aimed to identify potential influencing factors and examine the organisational constraints, which may be amenable to change. ⋯ Future interventions should be targeted at increasing the range of consultations in which offers are made, demonstrating how to make offers without increasing consultation time, providing more complete records of sexual activity, screens and results, and encouraging audit and review within the practice to promote practice wide approaches to increasing opportunistic screening.