John Street Medical Practice is an NHS research active practice.
We are an NIHR (National Institute of Health Research) level 1 research practice which means that we undertake several NHS research studies each year. This means that our patients, if suitable, may be asked to take part in research studies. By doing this research in a General Practice setting, rather than just in hospital patients, the results can be more easily applied to the whole UK population rather than just to select groups.
So, what does all this mean for patients?
You may be contacted from time to time about taking part in a study. If you are asked about taking part in research, someone in the care team looking after you will look at your health records to see whether you are eligible to take part before asking you whether you are interested or sending you a letter. You might be asked to complete questionnaires or to give your opinion to researchers during interviews.
Many patients have found taking part in research gives them the opportunity to benefit from cutting edge NHS care as well as the satisfaction of knowing they are helping others.
You are free to choose whether or not to take part in any research study you are approached about.
Your care and your relationship with your doctor will not be affected in any way if you decide not to take part in a research study.
Current Trials we are involved in:
ACES at Home
Cervical screening can save lives, yet only 7 in 10 in the UK attend, the lowest rate in 20 years. Reasons include embarrassment, fear of examination and inconvenience.
We would like to find out if self collected urine and vaginal tests could increase uptake in cervical screening. The tests have the potential to remove many of the current barriers to screening. They can be taken at home at a time most convenient for the patient.
To be eligible to take part in this study participants must be overdue cervical screening by 6 months or more. Samples will be tested for High Risk Human Papillomavirus – the virus known to cause cervical cancer. We will look at how many samples are returned and whether there is a preference for urine or vaginal sample collection.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The research test does not count towards NHS cervical screening. We will encourage the participant at every opportunity to also attend for routine cervical screening.
Hidden Workload Study
The study team want to better understand the daily workload of clinicians who work in general practice and specifically explore the large amount of work that clinicians do other than seeing patients in planned consultations. We refer to this as their “hidden” workload.
Why are we doing this research?
Clinicians in general practice are reporting increasing levels of workload. However, general practice workload is only recorded by the NHS in terms of appointment numbers and length. This leaves out the large amount of other work done in general practice, including reviewing results and documents, unplanned patient contacts, supervisory activities, and other administrative tasks. We also want to investigate how the health and social circumstances of local communities might affect the amount and types of general practice workload
What will participants be doing in the practice?
For the first part of the study, participants will record all the work they do on an allocated day between August 2024 and November 2024 using a simple paper workload data collection tool, and then enter this data online. No patient information will be collected during this process.
For the second part of this study participants may also be interviewed remotely about their experiences of general practice workload and caring for your practice’s local community. No identifiable information about your practice will be collected during interviews.
BRIT2 (Knowledge support to General Practitioners and patients: evaluation of the effectiveness of periodic feedback, decision support during consultations and peer comparisons in multi-arm cluster randomised trial)
This study aims to reduce patient demand for antibiotics where they are not indicated as a treatment.
We look at an online patient dashboard showing Hawthorn’s antibiotic prescribing. We can drill down to individual patients to identify where prescribing can be improved. We aim to present the information back to clinical meetings every 3 months.
Clinical staff can also use the BRIT2 Knowledge support system- This is a software application that provides a personalised patient risk score validated against millions of other patient records. The KSS also pulls coded information out of EMIS and summarises information useful to know when prescribing antibiotics. This information can be given to the patient when deciding whether to prescribe antibiotics.
Discover Me
We will send a text inviting patients to enroll in this study. They will need to complete a survey and provide a swab for genetic testing. The patient learns about their ancestry and the study aims to create a dynamic resource of demographic, health and genetic data to enable analyses to understand clinical disease progression in primary care and risk prediction. This study will enroll up to 15,000 individuals across the UK.
Further queries?
Our research lead is Dr Sinead Millwood. If you have any questions about research at John Street Medical Practice you can contact her by emailing gmicb-mh.hawthorn@nhs.net