Audit of care for epileptics in a general practice.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to D C Morrell.
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Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Despite the growing role of specialist obstetricians in intranatal care the importance of the general practitioner's role, especially in antenatal and postnatal care, is being increasingly recognized. We describe a new way of sharing care which involves the consultant obstetrician attending antenatal sessions at fortnightly intervals in the practice. In addition the antenatal record is retained by the patient herself who brings it to all attendances, both in the practice and at the hospital.We analysed the results of this arrangement and compared them with a controlled series of hospital patients and found some advantages for shared care arrangements including, in particular, a reduction in the number of different doctors seen by patients, a big reduction in the number of patients who were seen by more than three doctors, and an increase in the breast feeding rate at the time of discharge from hospital.
Health diaries were kept by 198 randomly-chosen women between the ages of 20 and 44. Symptoms were recorded on one day in three and on 57 per cent of symptom-days self-medication occurred. Even a minor shift from self-care to doctor care could make intolerable demands on the general-practitioner service in this country.Only a minority of symptoms (one in 37) are taken to the doctor and patients are highly selective in deciding which symptoms are appropriate for medical care. The perception of symptoms and the response of seeking medical advice are both significantly related to anxiety as measured by a personality questionnaire.
This paper reports on a study designed to relate certain social and psychological variables to demand for medical care in a random sample of female patients aged between 20 and 44 years, in a National Health Service General Practice in the United Kingdom. Women selected for study completed questionnaires on anxiety and on their social characteristics. They also completed a health diary for four weeks, and over 12 months their demand for general practitioner care was recorded. This paper summarizes some of the literature on the subject of utilization behaviour, describes the objectives and methodology, and gives some preliminary results suggesting associations between anxiety, perception of symptoms and demand for primary care.