UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE
Purpose of study
Authors
To analyse how and on what information General Practitioners (GPs) base their decision to prescribe antidepressants. This study looked at policies and practices used by GPs in regards to this problem. Subject of antidepressants has been addressed in many studies, recent increase in the statistics of amount of medicines prescribed for that reason shows that changes in the policies are required and this study focus on why is that. As the study was funded by Medical Research
Council, there are no potential conflicts of interests.
Number of authors as well as their qualifications are considered as sufficient to conduct that sort of study. However all six of them are coming from the academic background which shows possible lack of practical approach and can affect results, yet their research background shows that whole process was run faithfully and results are factual and accurate.
Design and data collection
Research questions
Research was questioning motives behind the decision to prescribe antidepressants or not for given person. Understanding this reasoning along with the faults of currently used policies may provide significant improvement in antidepressants prescriptions. All the questions and analysis are closely related to the problem and there is no evidence that used form of research faced participants with unethical or unrealistic demands. Appropriate literature search was conducted. Most of the literature sources were timely (only five were more than 10 years old at the time of the research), all of it was relevant to the subject and came from the trustworthy sources.
Data was recorded (and later transcript) during discussions of four different focus groups, which discussed three different vignettes that were used in previous studies. Each GP took part in only one focus group. After initial data analysis authors came to the conclusion that one more focus group is required to affirm or deny previously drawn conclusions as well as
Authors
To analyse how and on what information General Practitioners (GPs) base their decision to prescribe antidepressants. This study looked at policies and practices used by GPs in regards to this problem. Subject of antidepressants has been addressed in many studies, recent increase in the statistics of amount of medicines prescribed for that reason shows that changes in the policies are required and this study focus on why is that. As the study was funded by Medical Research
Council, there are no potential conflicts of interests.
Number of authors as well as their qualifications are considered as sufficient to conduct that sort of study. However all six of them are coming from the academic background which shows possible lack of practical approach and can affect results, yet their research background shows that whole process was run faithfully and results are factual and accurate.
Design and data collection
Research questions
Research was questioning motives behind the decision to prescribe antidepressants or not for given person. Understanding this reasoning along with the faults of currently used policies may provide significant improvement in antidepressants prescriptions. All the questions and analysis are closely related to the problem and there is no evidence that used form of research faced participants with unethical or unrealistic demands. Appropriate literature search was conducted. Most of the literature sources were timely (only five were more than 10 years old at the time of the research), all of it was relevant to the subject and came from the trustworthy sources.
Data was recorded (and later transcript) during discussions of four different focus groups, which discussed three different vignettes that were used in previous studies. Each GP took part in only one focus group. After initial data analysis authors came to the conclusion that one more focus group is required to affirm or deny previously drawn conclusions as well as
References: Hyde, J., Calnan, M., Prior, L., Lewis, G., Kessler, D. & Sharp, D. (2005) ‘A qualitative study exploring how GPs decide to prescribe antidepressants’. British Journal of Practice, October 2005, pp. 755-762 Moule, P. & Hek, G. (2011). Making Sense of Research: An Introduction for Health and Social Care Practitioners. Sage, Los Angeles, pp. 160-162. Michal Tomasz Kaliniak 6348494 Word count: 715