The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
-
Eighty practice managers identified 55 colleagues with disabilities in a postal survey. Most of the 15 people with disabilities who were subsequently interviewed described colleagues having helpful attitudes but changes had not been made to practice workplaces or systems to retain them at work. Proactive support for disabled workers might improve retention in the National Health Service workforce.
-
Previous research identifying the long-term mentally ill in primary care has been outside areas of deprivation. We used a case finding approach by a primary care group to identify the prevalence and characteristics of people with enduring and disabling mental ill health in a disadvantaged inner-city community. ⋯ The approach may be useful for local needs assessment. It highlights a need to consider disability as well as diagnosis for service development.
-
Editorial Comment
The Disability Discrimination Act: an opportunity more than a threat.
-
Involving patients in healthcare decisions makes a potentially significant and enduring difference to healthcare outcomes. One difficulty (among many) is that the 'involvement' of patients in decisions has been left undefined. It is usually conceptualised as 'patient centredness', which is a broad and variably interpreted concept that is difficult to assess using current tools. This paper attempts to gauge general practitioners' (GPs') attitudes to patient involvement in decision making and their views about the contextual factors, competences, and stages required to achieve shared decisions within consultations. ⋯ These clinicians viewed involvement as an implicit ethos that should permeate medical practice, provided that clinicians respect and remain alert to patients' individual preferred roles in decision making. The interpersonal skills and the information requirements needed to successfully share decisions are major challenges to the clinical consultation process in medical practice. The benefits of patient involvement and the skills required to achieve this approach need to be given much higher priority at all levels: at policy, education, and within further professional development strategies.
-
In Britain only 42% of women who initiate breast feeding are still breast feeding at four months, despite well documented health benefits. ⋯ This pragmatic study illustrates how information collected during routine clinical care by health visitors can help predict which women will give up breast feeding before three months. This could be useful to identify women whose social support needs are not being met and who may benefit from local initiatives. Infant feeding researchers should consider the influence of ethnicity and levels of social support on breast feeding outcomes.