Category Archives: Publications

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CaHRU presents at European Forum for Primary Care Conference in Amsterdam

EFPC-logo-4-k new versionMembers of CaHRU, Dr Coral Sirdifield, Ana Godoy and Prof Niro Siriwardena attended the annual conference of the European Forum for Primary Care (EFPC), ‘Integrated primary care: research, policy and practice’, at the Tobacco Museum in Amsterdam from 30 August to 1 September 2015 to meet with colleagues and present an invited workshop on patient experience at the meeting. Niro Siriwardena is a member of the advisory board of the EFPC and attended a board meeting on the day before the conference.

Coral Ana Niro3The workshop, entitled ‘QUALICOPC in the UK, the patient perspective, took place on the first afternoon of the conference and was informed by work from CaHRU on the EU funded Quality and Costs of Primary Care in Europe (QUALICOPC) study. The session was well attended, enabling participants to discuss different approaches for measuring patient satisfaction with primary care and how satisfaction could be improved. Coral and Ana presented an innovative approach called Importance-Performance Analysis, using the QUALICOPC data from England, to demonstrate how the technique could help practitioners, researchers and policy makers to identify where one most needed to focus to improve patient satisfaction.

riverboatThe conference included excellent keynotes from Prof Chris van Weel, Emeritus Professor of General Practice at Nijmegen (‘The history of Dutch General Practice or: how Primary Care saved the nation’), Dr Isabel Moulon from the European Medicine Agency (‘Bridging the gap between medicine development and clinical practice: is primary care out of the picture?’), Ellen Nolte from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (‘Integrating care: what we know and what we do not know’), Prof John Øvretveit of the Karolinska Institute (‘Priorities for actionable research to speed and spread improvements in caring for chronic illnesses’), Dr Tonka Poplas Susič and Metka Žitnik Šircelj (‘Model practices in family medicine in Slovenia’) and a closing summary from Prof Marc Bruijnzeels of the Jan van Es Institute (‘Challenges for the future of integrated primary care’). A range of parallel research, debate and workshop sessions, lunch on a riverboat and an excellent conference dinner provided a full, interesting and enjoyable programme for delegates.

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CaHRU Summer 2015 Newsletter

The latest edition of the CaHRU Newsletter (Summer 2015) was published this week. The newsletter presents the work of the research centre over the previous three months and includes articles from the CaHRU blog covering publications, conferences and funding. The newsletter is produced by Sue Bowler, CaHRU administrator.[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2015/09/CaHRU-Newsletter-Summer-2015.pdf” responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]

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New study from CaHRU shows link between flu vaccination and reduction in stroke

ipvastia_team2The latest study from CaHRU is published online in Vaccine this month. The study, ‘Influenza vaccine and risk of stroke: self-controlled case series study‘, was co-authored by Dr Zahid Asghar and Professor Niro Siriwardena from CaHRU together with Carol Coupland, professor of medical statistics at Nottingham University. The study used a self-controlled case series design with data from the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) on adult patients aged 18 years and above with fatal or non-fatal stroke during 8 years from September 2001 to May 2009.

h1n1Statistical analysis was used to compute incidence of stroke after flu vaccination compared with incidence during a baseline period in almost 18000 people who received one or more influenza vaccinations and experienced a first stroke during the observation period. The incidence (incidence rate ratio: IRR) of stroke was significantly reduced in the first 59 days following flu vaccination compared with the baseline period. We found reductions in stroke incidence of 55% in the first 1–3 days after vaccination, 36% at 4–7 days, 30% at 8–14 days, 24% at 15–28 days and 17% at 29–59 days after vaccination. Early vaccination between 1 September and 15 November was associated with a greater reduction in incidence of stroke compared to later vaccination given after mid-November.

Flu vaccination was associated with a reduction in incidence of stroke, which confirms findings from previous studies showing possible protective effects of flu vaccination for both heart attack and stroke. This association needs further confirmation with experimental (randomised controlled) trials.

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New paper published on contextual factors for quality improvement in ambulance services

EMAS - A&E 5_750A new study from CaHRU is published this month in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice entitled ‘Exploration of contextual factors in a successful quality improvement collaborative in English ambulance services: cross-sectional survey’.

EMAS - A&E 9_750The study, involving a research team from CaHRU including Viet-Hai Phung, Nadya Essam, Dr Zahid Asghar and Professor Niro Siriwardena together with Anne Spaight from East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust, explored clinical leadership and organisational culture and clinical engagement in quality improvement (QI) in the Ambulance Service Cardiovascular Quality Initiative, a QI collaborative involving all twelve ambulance services in England.

EMAS - PTS 2_750The study included a survey and qualitative analysis of free text responses from paramedics. Although paramedics perceived their organisations to have low levels of clinical leadership and culture of innovation overall, leadership behaviour and uptake of QI methods was significantly greater in those respondents who were directly involved in ASCQI. The QI collaborative led to significant improvements in prehospital care for acute myocardial infarction and stroke which may have been mediated through an improvement subculture linked to the QI collaborative.

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CaHRU at Society for Academic Primary Care annual conference in Oxford 2015

Keble_OxfordMembers of the CaHRU team and School of Health & Social Care had a strong presence at the conference the 44th Annual Conference of the Society for Academic Primary Care (SAPC) from 8th to 10th July at the University of Oxford. After an entertaining train journey to the historical Oxford, we had our first glimpses of the beautiful surroundings we were to spend the following three days.

Coral_OxfordDespina_OxfordOn the first day there was great interest in Coral Sirdifield’s poster “Comparing what patients value and what they experience in English general practice: a cross sectional survey“. Ana Godoy Caballero and Despina Laparidou also had lively conversations while presenting their posters on “Patient values and patient experiences in English general practice: a comparison by patient characteristics” and “Psycho-educational interventions for informal caregivers of people with dementia: a systematic review“.

 

Cahru_OxfordIn the evening we were treated to “Drinks with the Dinosaurs” at the museum of Natural History which was a fantastically unique setting to mingle with fellow SAPC attendees.

Zahid_OxfordThe second day was full of thought-provoking talks, especially the “Dangerous Ideas” session which was extremely popular and lead to some heated discussions. Dr Zahid Asghar gave a brilliant elevator pitch on “Bisphosphonates and risk of stroke: self-controlled case series study“, followed by Ana Godoy Caballero Ana_Oxford_EPwho gave an equally brilliant elevator pitch on “Bisphosphonates and risk of stroke: matched case-control study“. After a busy second day, we got dressed up and attended a wonderful formal dinner at Keble College where many gasped at how “Harry Potter” the setting was.

Jolien_Oxford_OralThe final day was as equally jam-packed as previous days with posters and oral presentations. Posters were presented by Jolien Vos on “Applicability of the Health Information Technology Acceptance Model in assessing readiness of older patients with multiple chronic diseases to adopt telecare – qualitative study” and Professor Niro Siriwardena presented Fiona Togher’s poster on “The development of a Patient Reported Experience Measure (PREM) for use in UK ambulance services“. Jolien Vos also gave a superb oral presentation on “Cast adrift in the care system? A systematic Rebecca_Oxford2scoping review of care navigation for older people with multimorbidity“, which provided a popular talking point during the elderly care and dementia session. Finally, Rebecca Porter’s poster presentation of “Mr Grumpy becomes Mr Happy: Effective sleep treatment using community pharmacists” was voted best poster by delegates! Mr Grumpy becomes Mr Happy was also one of 11 projects to be presented on the SAPC blog, an amazing achievement for Mr Grumpy!

The SAPC conference was full of great accomplishments for the University of Lincoln and we are all looking forward to next year’s conference in Dublin.

Rebecca Porter