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Biomedical subjects

J H Barber

Publications and source records attributed to J H Barber.

17 recordsLinked to original sources

Blood-pressure screening and supervision in general practice.

Since April 1975 all men aged 35-69 years registered with four general practices in west central Scotland have had their blood pressure checked whenever they visit the surgery. Although the practice locations range from rural to city centre and observers comprise receptionists, nurses, and doctors, a standard procedure has been adopted for the examination, recording, follow-up, and management of high blood pressure. The results confirm that raised blood pressure is common and often goes undetected. Even when hypertension is known, casual blood pressure readings often exceed accepted normal levels. The findings also show that a population may be routinely examined through normal contact with the family doctor, and that this can provide a convenient, acceptable, and effective means of detecting and reducing raised blood pressure.

Adult

Use of recording booklets to evaluate teaching in general practice.

Recording booklets have been introduced for students during their course of general practice teaching at the University of Glasgow. The booklets guide the students with patients in the community who have chronic and complicated diseases. Each case history in the booklet was marked and this provided an evaluation of the teaching. This showed an improvement in the students' overall ability but was most marked in the areas of social history and problem list, thus fulfilling the aims of the teaching.

Education, Medical, Undergraduate

Attitudes of medical undergraduates in Glasgow to computer-assisted learning.

Computer-assisted learning (CAL) has been introduced as part of the undergraduate teaching course in general practice during the penultimate year of the medical course. The student is given an opportunity to make clinical decisions and to manage a case over a significant time scale. The attitudes of the students are favourable to this method of instruction.

Attitude of Health Personnel

The benefits to an elderly population of continuing geriatric assessment.

There is currently great interest in the care of the elderly in general practice and discussion about the role of surveillance programmes. We report a comparison between two surveys of an elderly population carried out with a view to determining the difference in findings between two surveys of the same population.Each patient had an average of 4.8 problems at the time of the second assessment. The number of active and unknown problems fell from 6.4 per patient at the initial assessment.The greatest improvements were found in such topics as clothing, bedding, heating, dentition, diet, vision, and hearing, and the least in such aspects as dependency, home hazards, and problems with a caring relative.We remain convinced that a continuing programme of geriatric assessment is valuable in general practice.

Aged

Medical undergraduate teaching of paediatrics in the community.

The undergraduate teaching of childhood illness in the community is described. This teaching includes a cross-section of acute childhood illness together with some contact with handicapped children in their own homes. Although there were only four teaching sessions, the frequency of conditions studied approximated to that in general practice

Child

Introduction of recording booklets in general practice teaching.

A system of recording booklets had been introduced for fifth-year students during their course of teaching in general practice. The booklets guide the student in his study of the development, presentation and future prognosis of patients with chronic and complicated disease in the community. The students abilities and the teaching were assessed using case histories in a system of computer assisted learning.

Computer-Assisted Instruction

The workload of a commercial deputizing service.

The analysis of 1,098 calls to a commercial deputizing service during a period of four weeks is described. Approximately 20 per cent of the calls were for illnesses considered potentially life-threatening while in 22 per cent telephone advice was given and the patient was not visited by the deputy on call.

Adolescent

Early diagnosis of pregnancy in general practice.

The value of the signs and symptoms of pregnancy and of the pregnancy diagnostic test as predictors of pregnancy was estimated for 1,592 women seen in general practice. The presence of a sign or symptom alone is a poor pointer to a diagnosis of pregnancy. The combination of pairs of features improves the value, the best being breast signs combined with either the presence of signs of pregnancy on vaginal examination or a palpable fundus, both giving predictive values of 0.89. The pregnancy diagnostic test alone, however, had a predictive value of 0.91, a value of 1.00 indicating 100 per cent reliability.

Adolescent

Computer-assisted learning in undergraduate medical teaching.

A programme of computer-assisted learning has been introduced for fifth-year medical students at Glasgow University during the teaching course in general practice. The programme allows students to make decisions on all aspects of patient care, and has the potential for combining a learning situation with an objective evaluation of skills and attitudes. The programme is popular with students and could have considerable potential in medical education.

Adult