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Biomedical subjects

Karen Ballard

Publications and source records attributed to Karen Ballard.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

What's the delay? A qualitative study of women's experiences of reaching a diagnosis of endometriosis.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the reasons women experience delays in the diagnosis of endometriosis and the impact of this. DESIGN: A qualitative interview-based study of 32 women, 28 of whom were subsequently diagnosed with endometriosis. SETTING: Southeast England. PATIENT(S): Women attending a pelvic pain clinic. INTERVENTION(S): Semistructured interviews. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Women's reported experiences of being diagnosed with endometriosis. RESULT(S): Delays in the diagnosis of endometriosis occur at an individual patient level and a medical level, as both women and family doctors normalize symptoms, symptoms are suppressed through hormones, and nondiscriminatory investigations are relied upon. Women benefited from a diagnosis, because it provided a language in which to discuss their condition, offered possible management strategies to control symptoms, and provided reassurance that symptoms were not due to cancer. Diagnosis also sanctioned women's access to social support and legitimized absences from social and work obligations. CONCLUSION(S): Although recent guidelines for the management of chronic pelvic pain suggest that diagnostic laparoscopy may be considered a secondary investigation after the failure of therapeutic interventions, the present study highlights the importance of an early diagnosis for women who suffer at physical, emotional, and social levels when they remain undiagnosed.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Beyond the mask: women's experiences of public and private ageing during midlife and their use of age-resisting activities.

Accounts of ageing often employ the metaphor of a mask and suggest that individuals are motivated to present a youthful image. Drawing on interview data, we reveal that women aged 51-57 years distinguish between what we call 'public' and 'private' body ageing, both of which have an impact on age-resistance. Public ageing is visible, arising from physical changes in body appearance. These changes have the potential for concealment through age-resisting activities. Private ageing is less visible and arises largely from physiological changes within the body, which were perceived by women as irreversible indicators of ageing. This obduracy of the body led women to perceive themselves as ageing and also deterred them from participating in age-resistance. In contrast to masking theories, our study shows that most women in their 50s wanted to project a socially acceptable image that reflected their subjective sense of growing old.

Aging↗
PubMed2005

Variations in antibiotic prescribing and consultation rates for acute respiratory infection in UK general practices 1995-2000.

BACKGROUND: Antibiotic prescribing by GPs in the UK has declined since 1995. AIM: We investigated whether general practices that issue fewer antibiotic prescriptions to patients presenting with acute respiratory infections had lower consultation rates for these conditions. DESIGN OF STUDY: Retrospective data analysis. SETTING: UK general practice. METHOD: We analysed data from the General Practice Research Database, including all registered patients from 108 practices between 1995 and 2000. For each practice, numbers of consultations for acute respiratory tract infections and the proportion of consultations resulting in an antibiotic prescription were obtained. An age- and sex-standardised consultation ratio (SCR) and standardised prescription ratio (SPR) were calculated for each practice. We evaluated whether SPR and SCR values were associated. RESULTS: For the mid-year data (1997), the crude consultation rate for all acute respiratory infections ranged from 125-1,110 per 1,000 registered patients at different practices; the proportion of consultations with antibiotics prescribed ranged from 45-98%. After standardising for varying age and sex structure of practice populations, practices with lower SPR values had lower SCR values (r = 0.41; P<0.001). This association was observed in each study year. Moreover, practices that demonstrated reductions in SPR between 1995 and 2000 also showed reductions in SCR (r = 0.27; P = 0.005). CONCLUSION: Practices that prescribe antibiotics to a smaller proportion of patients presenting with acute respiratory infections have lower consultation rates for these conditions. Practices that succeed, over time, in reducing antibiotic prescribing also experience reductions in consultation rates for these conditions. Although our methodology cannot prove that these two findings are causally related, they imply that patients alter their illness behaviour and that this may be a response to previous consultation experience. In consequence, respiratory illness in the community may be undergoing a process of de-medicalisation.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed2002

Understanding risk: women's perceived risk of menopause-related disease and the value they place on preventive hormone replacement therapy.

OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to determine women's perceived risk of menopause-related disease and to understand how this shapes their decisions about taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for disease prevention. METHODS: A qualitative study based on analysis of audio-taped semi-structured interviews. The study was carried out in a community setting in Surrey. The participants were 32 women aged 51 to 57 years, registered with GPs in the West Surrey Health Authority. RESULTS: Women's ideas about the risk of menopause-related disease exist on two levels; a collective and an individual level. At a collective level, women acknowledge an increased risk of osteoporosis, and to a lesser degree, a risk of heart disease, associated with the menopause. At an individual level, however, based mainly on their family history and lifestyle, women do not generally consider themselves to be at personal risk of disease. Decisions to take HRT for the prevention of menopause-related disease are largely based on individual assessments of risk and, therefore, most women see a limited value in taking HRT primarily for disease prevention. CONCLUSIONS: Whilst women tend to associate the menopause with an increased risk of disease, they do not generally consider themselves to be at personal risk, and in turn, choose not to take HRT primarily for prevention.

Cardiovascular Diseases↗
PubMed2002

Women's use of hormone replacement therapy for disease prevention; results of a community survey.

This study investigated whether an increased use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is attributable to a growing motivation among women to use the therapy for disease prevention. Compared with earlier studies, results from this community survey of women aged 51 to 57 years revealed an increased use of HRT, 60% of women had tried HRT, with a median of four years' duration of use. The most frequently cited primacy use for HRT was symptom relief although many women also took the therapy for the prevention of osteoporosis. While women generally commence HRT for symptom relief the extended use of the therapy is, in part, likely to be attributable to an increased motivation among women to remain on HRT for its 'added' benefit of preventing osteoporosis.

Attitude to Health↗