Communication with GPs about long Covid in the family
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Communication with GPs about long Covid in the family: Qualitative analysis of diaries and recorded consultations
IRAS ID
303562
Contact name
Charlotte Albury
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford/ Research Governance, Ethics & Assurance Team
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 30 days
Research summary
Research Summary
Long Covid is a novel chronic health condition that is often managed within the family setting. Patients with long Covid who live in the family setting are most likely to manage symptoms with their general practitioner (GP). Communication between GPs and patients with long Covid can be difficult. GPs have to navigate the complexity of how to acknowledge and manage long Covid symptoms whilst knowledge of the condition is still emergent, as patients have fought to have long Covid recognised as a legitimate condition.
A clear priority is to understand patients’ experience of communicating with clinicians about long Covid. It is a health condition that GPs will not have much experience in communicating about, and is particularly difficult to discuss due to its chronic nature. However, there is a need to explore not only patient experiences, but examples of what actually happens in the consultations. Understanding what happens in the consultations, alongside patients’ experiences, will allow clear guidance to be developed to support clinicians in managing communication about long Covid in a way that is helpful and well received.
This project will collect data, both of patient experiences of these communications and of the consultations between patients and GPs, to unpack what works well and not so well in GP – patient interactions on long Covid. Our participants will have experience of long Covid, be geographically dispersed, and be from all aspects of family life, including parents with young children, and older children themselves. In this way, our findings will be applicable to the circumstances GPs face across the NHS.Summary of Results
The focus of this study is how Long Covid is affecting family life, schooling and relationships. This study was part of a wider project explored a rnage of different aspects of the social impact of long COVID. Here, we aimed to collect written/audio diaries and recorded consultations about people's experience seeing. GP with Long COVID.
Although we had planned to ask patients to audio record their consultations, few people were having regular GP appointments at the point of recruitment into this part of the study, and the unpredictable nature of when these rarer appointments would occur meant that we were unable to seek GP consent for recording in advance. The patients’ diaries, however, did provide rich windows into patients’ recall of the consultations soon after they occurred.REC name
South East Scotland REC 02
REC reference
21/SS/0081
Date of REC Opinion
10 Dec 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion