N Britten

..Recent research has shown that patients' expectations for prescriptions influence doctors' prescribing decisions, but little is known of the antecedents of these expectations...

..To identify and describe misunderstandings between patients and doctors associated with prescribing decisions in general practice...

..To investigate patients' agendas before consultation and to assess which aspects of agendas are voiced in the consultation and the effects of unvoiced agendas on outcomes...

..To explore the predictive accuracy of these instruments...

..This would require attention to structural aspects of the healthcare system to enable doctors to work fully within the patient-centred model...

..It is suggested that the disease model of menorrhagia is not relevant to the majority of women with this complaint. It is proposed that the disease model be replaced with illness models...

..To examine factors associated with uptake of HIV clinic services by black African HIV positive people living in London...

..These findings were presented in feedback sessions with participating GPs, who identified a number of barriers to shared decision making, as well as expressing an interest in developing strategies to overcome these barriers...

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..Patients vary in their desire to be involved in decisions about their care...

..What the patient wants from a general practice consultation and what the doctor believes they want are not always the same thing. This mismatch may lead to unwanted and unnecessary prescribing...

..The results of this paper suggest that using aversion as an interactional resource might be the only safe way for patients to express their aversion without seeming to breach the social contract...

..Some patients wish for a more directive approach, and practitioners need to develop skills to evaluate each patient's needs at each consultation...

..What benefits and problems do such people perceive and experience as important? To what extent do three subjective health questionnaires encompass and measure these treatment effects?..

..The research was developmental and findings suggest that unnecessary prescribing and problems in communication are more likely to lead to poor outcomes in terms of non-adherence and patients having barriers to using their medication...

..However, little attention has been paid so far to the ways in which this might actually be achieved...

..CONCLUSIONS: It is possible to use meta ethnography to synthesise the results of qualitative research. The worked example has produced middle-range theories in the form of hypotheses that could be tested by other researchers...

..To understand why general practitioners prescribe antibiotics for some cases of sore throat and to explore the factors that influence their prescribing...

..We searched for validated self-completion questionnaires suitable for measuring change in medication...

..Patients commonly experience palpable effects from antihypertensives. Few studies have examined patients' experiences of these effects and how they influence patients' behaviour and medicine-taking...

..We draw on a systematic review of research on two-way communication between patients and health practitioners about medicines in order to determine the extent to which concordance is, or is not, being put into practice...

..In addition, from it a practical method of qualitative research assessment evolved. This process is promising but requires further testing and evaluation before it could be recommended for more widespread adoption...

..Menstrual disorders are a common presentation in primary care. Wide variations in management as well as discordance between patient and practitioners in relation to presenting problems have been described...

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..This evaluation assessed the level and impact of consumer involvement in the London Primary Care Studies Programme (LPCSP), all of whose individual projects had to demonstrate substantial involvement as a condition of funding...