CaHRU students win top spots to present at SAPC Annual Scientific Meeting

sapcposterSeveral members of the Community and Health Research Unit have been selected for oral and elevator presentations at the forthcoming Society for Academic Primary Care Annual Scientific Meeting (SAPC ASM). This year’s conference will take place at the University of Warwick. The SAPC annual conference is the main international conference for primary care in the UK.

Dr Julie Pattinson will speak on her study, ‘Understanding reasons for variation by ethnicity in performance of general practice specialty trainees in the Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners’ Applied Knowledge Test: cognitive interview study’.

Dr Zahid Asghar will also give an oral presentation on, ‘Performance of candidates with dyslexia in the Applied Knowledge Test for Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners.’

An oral presentation will be given by Dr Murray Smith on the ‘Effect on hypnotic prescribing of a quality improvement collaborative for primary care of insomnia: a segmented regression analysis’.

CaHRU_logotypeDr Steph Armstrong will also speak at an elevator session on, ‘Ethical considerations in prehospital ambulance based research: an interview study of expert informants’, a study funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of the Network for exploring Ethics in Ambulance Trials (NEAT) project.

Michael Toze, will give an elevator pitch on his doctoral study, ‘Coming out in General Practice: the experience of older LGBT patients – his place ta the confernece was funded through the Best Oral Presentation Prize at the recent Trent Regional SAPC Conference hosted by CaHRU and the University of Lincoln.

clematis

Finally, the abstract submitted by Joseph Akanuwe, research assistant and doctoral student at CaHRU, ‘Exploring Service User and practitioner perspectives of QCancer use in primary care consultations’ was among the top 10 highest scoring abstracts and will be eligible to be considered for the SAPC/North American Primary Care Research Group travel prize.

The whole team have done particularly well this year to be awarded oral and elevator pitches for all abstracts presented, but our doctoral students in particular have excelled.

By Niro Siriwardena

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.

International keynote lecture and workshop in Amsterdam on interdisciplinary primary care for occupational and physiotherapy

Soemitro Poerbidipoero and students from the Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Soemitro Poerbidipoero and students from the Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Prof Niro Siriwardena presented a keynote lecture and joint workshop with a leading European community occupational therapist, Marije Bolt, to begin the ‘International seminar fur students: occupational therapy, primary care and interdisciplinary work’ at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam on 20 November 2014. Both are members of the advisory board of the European Forum for Primary Care. The workshop entitled: ‘Preparing for future challenges for occupational and physio-therapies in multidisciplinary primary care’ was given at invitation from Soemitro Poerbodipoero, International Coordinator at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and students at the institution.

VProf Siriwardena’s keynote lecture outlined the future challenges for primary and community care in Europe. This included analysis of the shift from secondary to primary care in most European countries, and the critical importance of interdisciplinary working involving primary care, community nursing and allied health professions for high quality community care for people with multiple long term health and social care conditions. The talk covered the need for integrated care to address the ever changing and complex health and social care system. Finally, he spoke about the importance of quality improvement tools and techniques for maintaining and improving the healthcare system.

Marije Bolt in Amsterdam

Marije Bolt in Amsterdam

Marije Bolt entered the auditorium in dramatic fashion on a bicycle, which is how she travels around Amsterdam to visit her clients. She went on to discuss ‘primary care in action’ discussing the international perspective, focusing on challenges for primary and community care, and reflecting on examples where care coordination could be improved. Both speakers facilitated students to apply this to a discussion of a case study.