Talking in Primary Care (TIP study)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Expectation Management for Patients in Primary Care: Feasibility Trial of a New Digital Intervention for Practitioners
IRAS ID
270728
Contact name
Felicity Bishop
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Southampton
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 29 days
Research summary
Osteoarthritis (OA) pain is common, costly, and challenging to manage in busy primary care settings. Regardless of which treatment patients receive, excellent practitioner-patient communication can significantly reduce patients’ pain while improving quality of life and satisfaction with care. Empathic and optimistic communication is likely to be effective and efficient for patients consulting with OA and will probably also benefit patients consulting with other conditions. Yet practitioners vary widely in how much they show empathy, use a positive approach, and/or use key non-verbal skills. A simple intervention concentrating on improving key elements of empathy and non-verbal communication is likely to be effective and efficient. We have developed an online training package for primary care practitioners (including General Practitioners - GPs, physiotherapists, and nurses) to enhance their consultation skills to show more empathy, improve their non-verbal communication skills, and encourage patients with osteoarthritis to have positive yet realistic expectations. We plan to conduct a small ‘feasibility’ trial to help us design a large, fundable, clinical trial to test the online empathy training package against usual care. Our aims for the feasibility trial are to assess a range of ways to recruit practices and their patients to participate in a trial and what approaches are most effective and acceptable. We will also assess ways to consent patients, the practicalities and acceptability video record consultations, ways to collect our proposed outcome measures and assess PCP use and experience of the online training tool. We will involve patient representatives in the design of the feasibility study to help ensure proposed procedures are relevant and realistic.
REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/SC/0553
Date of REC Opinion
6 Dec 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion