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Publications (27)
People of South Asian backgrounds living in the UK have a five-fold increased risk of diabetes and a two-fold increased risk of heart disease when compared to the general population. Physical activity can reduce the risk of premature death from a range of conditions. The aim of the study was to explore the motivating and facilitating factors likely...
Details of focus groups.
(DOCX)
Interview topic guide for physical activity specialist and community group leaders.
(DOCX)
Explanations and implications for clinicians and policymakers.
(DOCX)
Topic guide for South Asian focus groups.
(DOCX)
Details of Key Informants.
(DOCX)
Main themes emerging from the data.
(DOCX)
To ascertain the extent to which general practitioners in Queensland recommend physical activity to their patients, the types of patients they target, types of activities they suggest and how patients respond to the recommendations.
Questions designed to answer the research objectives were included in the Queensland Social Survey. Univariate, bivar...
Objective This study aimed to explore utilisation of a 'healthy reading' service and to offer further insight into improving the processes and uptake of book prescribing so that more people have the opportunity to access this treatment.Method Semi-structured interviews with librarians and prescribers. Collection of routine library data.Results The...
Rectal bleeding is an important symptom of colorectal cancer but has low predictive value in primary care.
To determine which characteristics of rectal bleeding, along with other factors, are predictive of colorectal cancer.
Observation study of patients with rectal bleeding referred to an open-access diagnostic clinic.
Primary care, southern Engla...
Stage at diagnosis and survival from cancer vary according to where people live, suggesting some may have delays in diagnosis. The aim of this study was to determine if time from presentation to treatment was longer for colorectal and breast cancer patients living further from cancer centres, and identify other important factors in delay. Data were...
Natural language generation (NLG) systems are computer software systems that produce texts in English and other human languages, often from non-linguistic input data. NLG systems, like most AI systems, need substantial amounts of knowledge. However, our experience in two NLG projects suggests that it is difficult to acquire correct knowledge for NL...
The National Health Service (NHS) intends to introduce a system of electronic transfer of prescription-related information between general practitioners (GPs) and community pharmacies. The NHS Plan describes how this will be achieved.
To gather opinions of patients, GPs, and community pharmacists on the development of a system of electronic transfe...
stop is a Natural Language Generation (nlg) system that generates short tailored smoking cessation letters, based on responses to a four-page smoking questionnaire. A clinical trial with 2553 smokers showed that stop was not effective; that is, recipients of a non-tailored letter were as likely to stop smoking as recipients of a tailored letter. In...
Objective — To assess the relative importance to pharmacists and general practitioners (GPs) of different characteristics of electronic prescribing systems.
Methods — A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was used to obtain preferences for the following attributes of an electronic prescribing scheme: “typical response time”, “frequency of slow respons...
The STOP system, which generates
To develop and evaluate, in a primary care setting, a computerised system for generating tailored letters about smoking cessation.
Randomised controlled trial.
Six general practices in Aberdeen, Scotland.
2553 smokers aged 17 to 65. Interventions: All participants received a questionnaire asking about their smoking. Participants subsequently receiv...
We describe the knowledge acquisition (KA) tech- niques used to build the STOP system, especially sorting and think-aloud protocols. That is, we describe the ways in which we interacted with domain experts to determine appropriate user categories, schemas, detailed content rules, and so forth for STOP. Informal evaluations of these techniques sugge...
This report assesses Quality of Life (QoL) and its relationship to current symptoms and prospective medical contact among 396 adult patients with asthma. Patients were 16 to 52 yr of age and in the care of family physicians in the northeast of Scotland. All patients had been prescribed asthma medication within the previous 3 mo. Mean %pred FEV(1) w...
The STOP system generates personalised smoking-cessation letters, using as input responses to a smoking questionnaire. Generating
personalised patient-information material is an area of growing interest to the medical community, since for many people changing
health-related behaviour is the most effective possible medical intervention. While previo...
Background: A good understanding of patient needs in written information is important in clinical communication. Research question: We asked patients to assess a chest clinic oral steroid leaflet and 3rd year medical students to predict patient attitudes to the leaflet. Sample: 88 chest clinic out patients (mean age 58 years) and 61 3rd year medica...
This study surveyed 1449 adults (aged 16 to 50 years, Av 31 years, SD10.2 years) who had used a bronchodilator inhaler in the previous 3 months, randomly chosen from 55 general practices in Grampian. 1139 (78%) completed a postal questionnaire including the SF-36 and questions about asthma morbidity. This was repeated 12 months later. Information o...
Asthma clinics have become widespread in general practice with nurses now playing an important role in asthma review. However, little is known about training of nurses carrying out reviews and how this affects the nurse role in patient management.
We aimed to discover the level of asthma training of practice nurses carrying out review of adult asth...
We surveyed 1463 adults (aged 16-50 years) in Grampian general practices who had recently been prescribed a bronchodilator. 1139 (78%) completed a postal questionnaire which included the SF-36 generic Quality of Life (QOL) questionnaire (Ware JE et al. Medical Care 1992: 31(3):247-263), a question on current smoking status and questions on day whee...
As part of a larger study of asthma care we carried out home interviews with a random sample of 346 adults (aged 16-50 years) in 50 general practices in Grampian, who had recently been prescribed a bronchodilator. The home interview assessed quality of life and attitudes to asthma review and included an assessment of inhaler technique. 84% of inter...