The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Global measures of outcome in a controlled comparison of pharmacological and psychological treatment of panic disorder and agoraphobia in primary care.
Panic disorder, with and without agoraphobia, is a prevalent condition which presents primarily in general practice. Previous clinical outcome studies have been conducted mainly in specialist university departments or hospital settings, and have tended to employ complex rating scales that are not well suited for use as outcome measures in primary care. ⋯ The brief global measures reported here proved adequate to the task of assessing treatment outcome. Results indicate that treatments including cognitive behaviour therapy can be effective in the treatment of panic disorder and agoraphobia in primary care.
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The British Journal of General Practice (BJGP) is the leading primary care journal in the world. By impact factor, it ranks 24th of all medical journals. However, despite major changes in the journal since its inception in 1954, there have been no published readership surveys since a limited report in 1969. ⋯ There is a view that the present BJGP is not relevant to the non-academic GP. This is probably due to style rather than content. Simple comparisons with a weekly multi-disciplinary journal may not be valid. The style could be updated to improve retention of information and to highlight areas of particular relevance. Readers are satisfied with the core content of the BJGP but want it to expand to include humour, clinical reviews and medical politics, for example. There is no evidence that the BJGP is more appealing to the academic GP. This study supports an expanded BJGP with an improved style.
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With increasing demand for health care, evidence-based medicine combined with health economics offers a method of optimizing allocation of limited resources. Depression is an illness that has a high prevalence with important medical, social and economic implications. More than 90% of depression is diagnosed and treated in general practice. ⋯ An evidence-based approach does not make clear whether SSRIs or TCAs should be used for the treatment of depression in general practice. Research questions arising from general practice should be addressed in a relevant setting and should yield answers that will complement and support a more pragmatic system of medicine rather than seek to direct it.
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Primary care has long been of interest to policy research. Recently, there is evidence to suggest that it is becoming more difficult to encourage GPs (general practitioners) to participate in surveys. As low response rates can introduce bias into survey results, it is important to study the effects of non-response. ⋯ Some significant differences were identified, indicating the presence of non-response bias. A low response rate need not affect the validity of the data collected, but it is still necessary to test for non-response effects and make corrections to the original data in order to maximize validity.