The European journal of general practice
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Despite significant evidence supporting the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in the prevention of cervical cancer, uptake of this vaccine is below target in many countries. HPV uptake in Ireland has declined from 87% in 2014-15 to 51% in 2016-17 and currently remains suboptimal at 64.1% in 2017-18. ⋯ This study suggests that significant parental concerns remain to the HPV vaccine. More comprehensive information on the research surrounding this vaccine's safety profile is required. GP's may play a pivotal role in HPV vaccination going forward.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the rapid reorganisation of health and social care services. Patients are already at significant risk of healthcare-associated harm and the wholesale disruption to service delivery during the pandemic stood to heighten those risks. ⋯ Constraints from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to patient safety incidents during non-COVID-19 care. Lessons from these incidents pinpoint where primary care services in France can focus resources to design safer systems for patients.
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Role modelling is recognised as an important element in career choice. In strongly hospital-based medical education settings, students identify few primary care physicians as positive role models, which might impact their career plans and potentially contribute to primary care workforce shortage. At Geneva Faculty of Medicine (Switzerland), a compulsory final-year clerkship in primary care practices was introduced to strengthen primary care teaching in the curriculum. ⋯ Our exploratory study suggests that introducing a compulsory primary care clerkship may have contributed to increasing the visibility of primary care physicians as role models. Future research should explore primary care physicians' awareness of role modelling and its contribution to career choices.
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Multicenter Study
Predictors for mortality due to acute exacerbation of COPD in primary care: Derivation of a clinical prediction rule in a multicentre cohort study.
In primary care (PC), 80% of the acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) are treated. However, no predictive model has been derived or validated for use in PC to help general practitioners make decisions about these patients. ⋯ This rule stratifies patients into three categories of risk and suggests to the physician a different action for each category: managing low-risk patients in PC, referring high-risk patients to hospitals and taking other criteria into account for decision-making in patients with moderate risk. These findings suggest that it is possible to accurately estimate the risk of death due to AECOPD without complex devices. Future studies on external validation and impact assessment are needed before this prediction rule may be used in clinical practice.
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Understanding health-seeking behaviour could significantly reduce the impact of illness on patients' lives. Fragmentation of the Lebanese healthcare system and presence of variability in socio-economic factors have affected some aspects of the Lebanese population's overall health seeking behaviour. One of these aspects is seeking diagnosis from pharmacists, which is prohibited by the Lebanese law but reinforced by the absence of supervision of concerned authorities. ⋯ Our study showed that a significant proportion of the Lebanese population seek a diagnosis from pharmacists and a significant proportion of them have a misconception about the role of pharmacists in the Lebanese healthcare system.