Members of the CaHRU team attended the Society for Academic Primary Care Trent Regional Spring conference on Tuesday 15 March 2016 at College Court Conference Centre in Leicester. At the meeting were Drs. Zahid Asghar and Coral Sirdifield and PhD student Joseph Akanuwe (giving oral presentations), Dr Jo Middlemass and Jolien Vos (who led a workshop on multimorbidity), and Despina Laparidou, who gave a poster presentation. Prof Siriwardena was in attendance to support the team.
The Leicester Department of Primary Care and Diabetes Centre hosted the event on behalf of the Universities of Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Lincoln, and as always it proved to be a worthwhile event with excellent keynote speakers and high quality presentations of research including from members of CaHRU. The opening keynote was given by Prof Maureen Baker, a Lincolnshire GP, who spoke on the ‘Future of General Practice’, describing the current problems of underfunding and poor morale and how general practice which deals with 90% of patient contacts with 9% of NHS funding can develop in future.
In the multimorbidity workshop Jolien Vos presented her doctoral study on, ‘Care networks of older people with multimorbidity: social network analysis and qualitative study’ and led a discussion on patient vignettes derived from these. Jo Middlemass presented a European study, ‘Perceptions and experiences of telemonitoring in older patients with multimorbidity: a qualitative study’ and discussed implementation of remote monitoring technologies with delegates. They were joined by Steve Leven from Leicester who presented on the link between pay-for-performance with deprivation and multimorbidity.
Despina Laparidou gave a poster session on ‘Challenges for carers of people with dementia and their support needs from health and social care providers: a qualitative study’. After lunch, Prof Richard McManus, from Oxford presented his groundbreaking TASMINH studies on ‘Self-management of hypertension – can patients do it better?’ The answer, a qualified yes but with help from primary care practitioners, is a triumph for supported self-care.
At the final session Dr Zahid Asghar presented his work with Dr Jon Dixon (Sheffield University) and Prof Siriwardena on ambulance care for people with convulsions, ‘Exploratory cross-sectional study of factors associated with transport to hospital after suspected seizure’ and Joseph Akanuwe described his doctoral study, ‘Exploring patient and practitioner perspectives of QCancer use in primary care consultations’. The session was attended by Prof Carol Coupland from Nottingham University, one of the originators of QCancer.