Resources
Members of the APEx team have developed a wide range of resources as a result of our research, which can be used by clinicians in practice, and also by researchers working in the area of academic primary care and beyond. More details on a number of these key resources are provided below.
Blogs
We share staff profiles, news, including departmental and research, and opinion pieces on our APEx blog.
Find out more by visiting the APEx blog
Primary Care Key Literature
Across the UK, considerable primary care-based research is conducted by GP practices and their teams. The focus of the research relates to applied clinical medicine, and to research investigating the organisation and delivery of care, including important topics such as access, availability, workload, GP workforce, quality of care, etc. Much of the funding to support this research comes from the UK’s National Institute of Health Research (budget £1.2billion) or from major research funders such as MRC, Wellcome, or major research charities (such as Diabetes UK, Cancer Research UK, or British Heart Foundation).
Below, we've summarised some key papers from UK-based primary care research from recent years. A number of these derive from the Exeter team, but our intent here is to focus on primary care research more widely. This webpage incorporates the presentation of a number of studies which have been drawn from primary care. Have a look, therefore, at some high quality research emanating from academic primary care within this Medical School and from elsewhere in the UK.
Papers have been drawn from a variety of sources, but have been selected to provide you with the opportunity to look at a number of research designs, for example, systematic reviews, cohort studies, randomised clinical trials, qualitative research. Each study involves a variety of analytical approaches, and each study provides an opportunity to explore the nature of scientific evidence as it applies to primary care and health services research.
Clinical trials
- Telephone triage for management of same-day consultation requests in general practice (the ESTEEM trial): a cluster-randomised controlled trial and cost-consequence analysis (Campbell et al 2014)
- Early treatment with prednisolone or acyclovir in Bell's palsy (Sullivan et al 2007)
- Chloramphenicol treatment for acute infective conjunctivitis in children in primary care: a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial (Mant et al 2005)
- Implementation of self management support for long term conditions in routine primary care settings: cluster randomised controlled trial (Rogers et al 2013)
- Extended and standard duration weight-loss programme referrals for adults in primary care (WRAP): An RCT (Aveyard et al 2017)
- Effect of self-monitoring and medication self-titration on systolic blood pressure in hypertensive patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease: the TASMIN-SR randomised clinical trial (McManus et al 2014)
- Diet or diet plus physical activity versus usual care in patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes: the Early ACTID randomised controlled trial (Peters et al 2011)
Systematic review and meta-analysis
Association of a difference in systolic blood pressure between arms with vascular disease and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis (Clark et al 2012)
Observational
- Understanding high and low patient experience scores in primary care: analysis of patients' survey data for general practices and individual doctors (Campbell et al 2014)
- Continuity of care with doctors - a matter of life and death? A systematic review of continuity of care and mortality (Pereira Gray et al 2018)
- Childhood urinary tract infection in primary care: a prospective observational study of prevalence, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery (Butler et al 2015)
Risk assessment
- Preferences for cancer investigations: a vignette-based study of primary care attendees (Hamilton et al 2014)
- Evaluation of risk assessment tools for suspected cancer in general practice: a cohort study (Hamilton et al 2013)
- Diagnosing type 2 diabetes before patients complain of diabetic symptoms - clinical opportunistic screening in a single general practice (Evans et al 2008)
- Application of Framingham risk estimates to ethnic minorities in United Kingdom and implications for primary prevention of heart disease in general practice: cross sectional population based study (Oakeshott et al 2002)
- Cost effectiveness of options for diagnosis of high blood pressure in primary care: a modelling study (McManus et al 2011)
Qualitative
- Talking about depression: a qualitative study of barriers to managing depression in people with long term conditions in primary care (Dickens et al 2011)
- Women's experiences of referral to a domestic violence advocate in UK primary care settings: a service-user collaborative study (Feder et al 2014)
