• Family practice · Aug 2013

    Review

    Effects of improved patient participation in primary care on health-related outcomes: a systematic review.

    • Ariëtte R J Sanders, Inge van Weeghel, Maartje Vogelaar, William Verheul, Ron H M Pieters, Niek J de Wit, and Jozien M Bensing.
    • Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht. the Netherlands. a.r.j.sanders-vanlennep@umcutrecht.nl
    • Fam Pract. 2013 Aug 1; 30 (4): 365-78.

    BackgroundIn primary care, many consultations address symptom-based complaints. Recovery from these complaints seldom exceeds placebo effects. Patient participation, because of its supposed effects on trust and patient expectancies, is assumed to benefit patients' recovery. While the idea is theoretically promising, it is still unclear what the effects of increased patient participation are on patient outcomes. Aim. To review the effects of controlled intervention studies aiming to improve patient participation in face-to-face primary care consultations on patient-oriented and/or disease-oriented outcomes.MethodsThis study is a systematic review. A systematic search was undertaken for randomized controlled trials designed to measure the effects of interventions that aimed to improve adult patients' participation in primary care visits. The CINAHL, Cochrane, EMBASE, PsycINFO and PubMed databases were searched.ResultsSeven different trials fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Three of the studies were related to symptom-based complaints. Five studies measured patient-oriented outcomes, the primary outcome of interest for this review. All studies suffered from substantial bias. Studies varied widely in their aims, types of complaints/diseases, strength of the interventions and their outcomes. The effects on patient-oriented outcomes and disease-oriented outcomes were ambiguous.ConclusionLittle research has been performed on health outcomes of interventions aiming to increase patient participation in general practice visits among patients suffering from symptom-based complaints. The results still are non-conclusive. The quality of the trials has been weak, possibly due to the complexity of the concept. This weak quality may explain the lack of conclusive results. Proposals for future research designs are offered.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…