The Trent Regional meeting of the Society for Academic Primary Care took place on Tuesday 25th March at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel in Lincoln. The conference, hosted for the first time by CaHRU and the University of Lincoln, was attended by 86 delegates from the Universities of Nottingham, Lincoln, Sheffield and Leicester as well as local GPs and staff from the Research and Development Departments at East Midlands Ambulance Service and the Lincolnshire Community Health Service NHS Trusts.
The day began with a welcome from Professor Sara Owen, Pro Vice Chancellor of the College of Social Science at the University of Lincoln. An exciting program was launched with a keynote from Prof Jan De Maeseneer (Ghent University, Belgium). As a national and internationally acknowledged guru in the field of Primary Care, his presentation on “Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity” set a positive and inspiring note for the rest of the day.
[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2014/04/SAPCkeynoteJDM_Lincoln2014.pdf” width=”700″ height=”300″ responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]
Following this inspiring keynote, the conference continued with two parallel sessions and a workshop. Participants could move between the presentations on topics such as prevention of childhood accidents care for children and long term conditions, diabetes mellitus and a well-attended workshop about sharing evidence based ideas for the future of general practice. The morning continued with another impressive keynote, this time by Prof Jonathan Mant (University of Cambridge). His lecture entitled, “How can primary care research inform stroke prevention” elaborated on how research in primary care can inform and shape stroke prevention.
[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2014/04/SAPCkeynoteJM_Lincoln2014.pdf” width=”700″ height=”300″ responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]
The afternoon program included a poster viewing covering a range of topics. This was followed by the opportunity to attend three further parallel sessions. Research studies on alcohol misuse, ethnic variations in care and patient reported outcome measures were presented. A strong active involvement from the CaHRU team was visible in presentations concerning the use of emergency and urgent services, differences in pre-hospital care delivery between non-white and white patients and barriers and facilitators for accessing pre-hospital care by people in minority ethnic groups. The meeting closed with the presentation of prizes for the best poster and presentation wrapped up the excited conference day.
Attendees found the programme “useful and varied” and valued the opportunity to network with fellow researchers from the Trent region. Delegates welcomed the opportunity to inform themselves of current developments in primary care and to participate in discussions and networking. The next meeting of the Society for Academic Primary care will be the national conference to be held in Edinburgh from 9th – 11th July.
By Jolien Vos and Sue Bowler.