research
Research currently in progress:
A survey of attitudes of medical students in England and Wales towards evidence based medicine & NICE guidelines
Aim
- The primary aim is to describe the attitudes of medical students towards NICE guidelines. The secondary objective is to seek to understand the influence of their work environment on their attitude. The work environment includes peer influence and patient interaction within real-life scenarios.
Can real time video pictures help specialists assess acute illness in children?
Aims
- To test the quality of the video images between two sites during an assessment of an acutely ill child.
- To test the feasibility of using transmitted video images for the assessment of the acutely sick child.
Talking about Medicines
Aims
- To use critical evidence synthesis and consensus-building methods to examine the child-parent-provider triad at individual and organisational levels to:
- examine expectations, experiences and concerns about medicines;
- explore transferring responsibility control for older adolescents, and how to facilitate honest disclosure of medicines-taking behaviours;
- clarify perceptions of roles, empowerment, rights and responsibilities associated with long-term medicines use;
- understand children's and parents' interaction with the health system in community, primary and secondary care from initial contact to medicines supply, and over time;
- To devise a child-centred paediatric medicines management package that works across ages, social characteristics, conditions, complexity of needs and service delivery settings, informed by individual and organisational perspectives;
- To explore operation of the package, the complexity and nature of resulting consultations, to determine feasibility and generalisability;
- To assess methods of objective evaluation of behaviour change, clinical outcome and resource use.
Understanding and improving the experience of children with fever and their families
Aims
- To provide a snapshot of how the urgent and emergency care pathway for children is currently being delivered in terms of safety and quality in a sample of settings by different providers using the NICE guideline on “Feverish illness in children: Assessment and initial management in children younger than 5 years” as a framework.
- To understand the contribution of different providers and how they facilitate the child’s journey along the care pathway and to determine any interface issues or barriers to the movement of the child through the care pathway.
- To identify parent’s views about navigating through the patient journey and the contribution by the various provider organisations. Examples of positive and negative experiences will be highlighted and will be used to inform future service design.
Recognising Acute Illness In Children
Aim
- To establish whether vital signs can be used to predict severity of illness in acutely sick children
