Effective treatments are needed for the increasing number of people living with obesity. General practitioners (GPs) are key in managing obesity within the NHS but report low confidence in available treatment options. Glucagon-like Peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) have shown promise in weight management, but at the time of this study lacked commissioned primary care service pathways for this indication.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To develop a core outcome set for stillbirth care.
Design: Consensus development study.
Setting: International.
Background: Pregnant people are often excluded from clinical trials, primarily due to safety concerns. However, exclusion causes population-level harms as well as sometimes providing individual protection. Harms caused to pregnant people by exclusion from clinical trials have been clearly evidenced and highlighted during the COVID pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Endometriosis affects approximately 10% of those assigned female at birth. Diagnostic journeys can be complex. The average 7-9 years between presenting symptoms and diagnosis has not changed significantly despite guidance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To coproduce an inclusive intervention for blood pressure (BP) self-management post partum.
Design: Using the person-based approach, an intervention was coproduced in three phases. Phase 1 entailed intervention coproduction with a diverse patient and public involvement panel and stakeholders (clinical, academic, government and third sector-based).
Background: Clinical trials need to include patients who are representative of the population who may receive the tested interventions in the future. The importance of inclusivity is recognised by ethical and funding bodies and has public support. Appropriate inclusion is required to provide equitable evidence-based healthcare and to comply with ethical principles for research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In the United Kingdom, pregnant women are offered two scans: at 11-14 and 18-20 weeks' gestation. Current guidance supports fetal anatomical screening at the second scan, but evidence suggests earlier detection is possible.
Objectives: To determine clinical and cost-effectiveness of a detailed two-dimensional ultrasound scan in the first trimester for detection of fetal anomalies, in addition to usual practice.
Background: Post-partum haemorrhage (PPH) is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality and morbidity worldwide. The Obstetric Bleeding Strategy (OBS) care bundle for PPH management was adopted into Welsh national guidelines in 2019 (as OBS Cymru), and is currently being implemented across 36 sites in the rest of the UK through the OBS UK stepped-wedge cluster randomised controlled trial. We conducted a qualitative evaluation of the OBS care bundle five years after its adoption to inform plans for optimising its implementation across the UK.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Interpretations of 'recovery' from illness are complex and influenced by many factors, not least patient expectations and experiences. This paper examines meanings of 'recovery', and how it is strived towards, drawing on the example of COVID-19 infection.
Methods: Drawing on qualitative interviews (n = 93) conducted in the UK between February 2021 and July 2022, we compare adults' accounts of being admitted to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with COVID-19 to accounts of being ill with Long COVID, defined as ongoing symptoms for at least 12 weeks postinfection.
Background: Despite recognition of the importance of patient and public involvement (PPI) in healthcare improvement, compelling examples of "what good looks like" for PPI in co-design of improvement efforts, how it might be done, and formalisation of methods and reporting are lacking. In this article, we sought to address these gaps through a case study to illustrate a principled approach to integrating PPI into the co-design of healthcare improvement.
Methods: The case study aimed to involve maternity service users in the co-design of clinical resources for a maternity improvement programme, using a four-stage approach: 1) establishing guiding principles for PPI in the programme, 2) structuring PPI for the programme, 3) co-designing improvements with PPI, and 4) seeking feedback on PPI in the co-design process.
Introduction: Neonatal death exerts long-lasting impact on parents' mental health, finances and relationships, and the wider family. There is national and international momentum to evaluate interventions to support parents after the death of a baby. Core Outcome Sets (COSs) provide a minimum set of outcomes, agreed by stakeholders to be important, which should be evaluated in all studies to support evidence syntheses and identification of the most effective interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Approximately 15 million babies are born prematurely every year worldwide. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Asia account for more than half of the global preterm deliveries. Prominent healthcare structural and socio-economic factors in SSA, for example poverty and weak health systems, amplify vulnerabilities for mothers and premature babies; often leading to poor outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Pregnancy Childbirth
November 2024
Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that women with HIV breastfeed for a minimum of one year. In contrast, across high-income countries, HIV and infant-feeding guidelines recommend exclusive formula feeding if parents want to avoid all risk of postpartum transmission. However, recently these guidelines (including in the United Kingdom (UK)) increasingly state that individuals with HIV should be supported to breast/chest feed if they meet certain criteria; such as an undetectable maternal HIV viral load and consent to additional clinical monitoring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Health economic assessments are used to determine whether the resources needed to generate net benefit from an antenatal or newborn screening programme, driven by multiple benefits and harms, are justifiable. It is not known what benefits and harms have been adopted by economic evaluations assessing these programmes and whether they omit benefits and harms considered important to relevant stakeholders.
Objectives: (1) To identify the benefits and harms adopted by health economic assessments in this area, and to assess how they have been measured and valued; (2) to identify attributes or relevance to stakeholders that ought to be considered in future economic assessments; and (3) to make recommendations about the benefits and harms that should be considered by these studies.
Qual Res Med Healthc
December 2023
Long-term conditions and accompanied co-morbidities now affect about a quarter of the UK population. Enabling patients and caregivers to communicate their experience of illness in their own words is vital to developing a shared understanding of the condition and its impact on patients' and caregivers' lives and in delivering person-centred care. Studies of patient language show how metaphors provide insight into the physical and emotional world of the patient, but such studies are often limited by their focus on a single illness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The BUMP trials evaluated a self-monitoring of blood pressure intervention in addition to usual care, testing whether they improved detection or control of hypertension for women at risk of hypertension or with hypertension during pregnancy. This process evaluation aimed to understand healthcare professionals' perspectives and experiences of the BUMP trials of self-monitoring of blood pressure during pregnancy.
Methods: Twenty-two in-depth qualitative interviews and an online survey with 328 healthcare professionals providing care for pregnant people in the BUMP trials were carried out across five maternity units in England.
Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that women with HIV breastfeed for a minimum of one year. In contrast, United Kingdom (UK) guidelines encourage formula feeding, but breastfeeding can be supported under certain circumstances. Infant-feeding decisions often involve personal and social networks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClinical tools for use in practice-such as medicine reconciliation charts, diagnosis support tools and track-and-trigger charts-are endemic in healthcare, but relatively little attention is given to how to optimise their design. User-centred design approaches and co-design principles offer potential for improving usability and acceptability of clinical tools, but limited practical guidance is currently available. We propose a framework (FRamework for co-dESign of Clinical practice tOols or 'FRESCO') offering practical guidance based on user-centred methods and co-design principles, organised in five steps: (1) establish a multidisciplinary advisory group; (2) develop initial drafts of the prototype; (3) conduct think-aloud usability evaluations; (4) test in clinical simulations; (5) generate a final prototype informed by workshops.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRaised blood pressure affects around ten percent of pregnancies worldwide, causing maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Self-monitoring of blood pressure during higher-risk or hypertensive pregnancy has been shown to be feasible, acceptable, safe, and no more expensive than usual care alone. Additionally, self-testing for proteinuria has been shown to be just as accurate as healthcare professional testing, creating the potential for monitoring of multiple indicators through pregnancy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Large-scale improvement programmes are a frequent response to quality and safety problems in health systems globally, but have mixed impact. The extent to which they meet criteria for programme quality, particularly in relation to transparency of reporting and evaluation, is unclear.
Aim: To identify large-scale improvement programmes focused on intrapartum care implemented in English National Health Service maternity services in the period 2010-2023, and to conduct a structured quality assessment.