BACKGROUND The dangers of long-term sickness absence and worklessness are well recognized. In the UK, the occupational health (OH) community was challenged to seek new partners to support health in working age people. A National Health Service OH service and Leicestershire general practice set up a pilot clinic to provide work-related health advice in primary care. AIMS To recruit 100 patient...

OBJECTIVES To describe the use of primary care services by a prisoner population so as to understand the great number of demands and therefore to plan services oriented to the specific needs of these patients. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study of a sample of prisoners' medical records. SETTING All Belgian prisons (n = 33). PATIENTS 513 patients over a total of 182 patient years, 3328 gene...

BACKGROUND Home visits by Community Health Workers [In Uganda Community Health Workers are given the collective term of Village Health Teams (VHTs). Hereafter referred to as VHTs] is recommended to improve maternal and newborn care. We investigated perceived maternal and newborn benefits of home visits made by VHTs, combined with mobile phone consultations with professional health workers for a...

INTRODUCTION Pharmacists can assist patients in managing their blood pressure levels. We assessed whether adherence to blood pressure medication improved among people who used community pharmacies in rural Montana after pharmacists initiated consultations and distributed educational materials developed for the Million Hearts Initiative's "Team Up. Pressure Down." (TUPD) program. METHODS From ...

who through ignorance of the proper method commits error after error and who is led astray by a simplistic reliance on symptoms. But there are limits to a doctor's knowledge; only God, a higher power, knows everything or disposes of health to every patient, and the workings of the heavens are not always revealed to the physician. Sometimes the responsibility for a patient's failure to recover c...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the number of asthma attacks treated in the emergency room of a public hospital and to study seasonal fluctuations, taking into consideration the local climate, which is characterized by having only two seasons: a rainy/humid season and a dry season. METHODS A retrospective survey was conducted in a community general hospital. A total of 37,642 emergency room consultatio...

OBJECTIVE To examine race/ethnicity differences in pain management outcomes following inpatient palliative care consultation. METHODS We conducted a retrospective study based on data from a community-based teaching hospital in Fresno, CA, USA, from April 2014 to July 2015. One hundred sixty-one patients with life-limiting diagnoses and palliative care pain-related consultations were included....

BACKGROUND Naturopaths and Western herbal medicine (WHM) practitioners were surveyed to identify their extent, experience and roles within the community pharmacy setting and to explore their attitudes to integration of complementary medicine (CM) practitioners within the pharmacy setting. METHOD Practising naturopaths and WHM practitioners were invited to participate in an anonymous, self-adm...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the extent to which patients disclose their concerns to community nurses during wound care consultations. METHOD Using an 'observation checklist' based on themes and subthemes that were identified in a previous study of the same patients, 20 wound care consultations were observed. The non-participant observer completed the checklist and made field notes regarding the con...

OBJECTIVES To compare health-related and cost-related outcomes of consultations for symptoms suggestive of minor ailments in emergency departments (EDs), general practices and community pharmacies. DESIGN Observational study; prospective cohort design. SETTING EDs (n=2), general practices (n=6) and community pharmacies (n=10) in a mix of rural/urban and deprived/affluent areas across North ...