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Feature
Addressing child weight with parents
Opportunities to support healthcare professionals in addressing child weight with parents were identified by GPs, primary care nurses, and school nurses. They recommended structural changes within primary and community care, joined-up systems and data sharing across agencies, and development of healthcare professionals' knowledge and skills, specifically via core training and continuing professional development. Changes within healthcare services would help healthcare professionals to assist parents of children who struggle with their weight.
Highlights
Online First
Recent Features
Online consultation insights
In the largest study in the world of patient experiences of online consultations, influences on patients' experiences of online consultation systems are multifactorial, and are based on characteristics of the patient, the conditions they consult about, system design, and how it is used by GP staff. Key drivers of positive patient experiences were how individual GP practices conduct online consultations (e.g. clear advertising of their availability) and aspects of online consultation design (e.g. systems that allow patients to write in their own words).
User personas to capture disadvantage
User personas can illuminate the multiple and intersecting dimensions of disadvantage in marginalised patient populations, and may prove useful when designing or redesigning digital primary care services. Equity is an important core value in primary care, but meeting the needs of patients who are multiply disadvantaged is increasingly difficult as services become more digitised. This study explores the lived experience of digital disparities in disadvantaged patients and advocates for using user personas as design tools to address these disparities in healthcare.
Asthma: post-hospitalisation care
After asthma-related hospitalisation, a significant proportion of patients do not receive timely follow-up in primary care, according to new research. These findings, based on over 17,000 primary care records, contribute to explaining why asthma-related hospitalisations remain high in the UK, particularly among patients from Black ethnic minority groups. Only 60% of patients had received some form of asthma care from their GP surgery within 28 days of being discharged from hospital. This research offers tips for prevention of further exacerbations in post-hospitalised asthma patients.