Seminar: Multiple Symptoms Study 3 – developing and testing a complex intervention in primary care

Professor Chris Burton, from the University of Sheffield, will give the June Improvement Science and Research Methods seminar on the topic of complex intervention trials in primary care. It takes place online and in-person from 11am – 12pm on Wednesday 19 June.

Around 2% of adults have multiple persistent physical symptoms (such as pain, fatigue, dizziness, gastrointestinal symptoms) which don’t fit into neat diagnostic categories. Many of them have poor experience of healthcare which fails to explain these symptoms in a useful way. This talk will describe the development of the Symptoms Clinic Intervention and how it was tested in the recent Multiple Symptoms Study 3. As part of this it will examine how process evaluation data was used to address the question facing any pragmatic consultation trial with usual care control: “was it just that people got more attention?”

Chris Burton is Professor of Primary Medical Care at the University of Sheffield. His main research and clinical interest is in persistent physical symptoms but his work extends to broader issues around the intersection of physical and mental health. His work focuses on the interpersonal aspects of care including involving the processes of diagnosis, explanation and reassurance. His research involves a range of approaches including evidence synthesis, analysis of routine healthcare data, qualitative analysis and the development and evaluation of interventions. He has a longstanding interest in the application of complexity science to illness and healthcare. He leads the Primary Care Research group within the School of Medicine and Population Health at the University of Sheffield. Chris worked for many years as a GP in a rural former coal-mining community in the Southwest of Scotland. He completed his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh and was a Senior Lecturer in Primary Care at the University of Aberdeen before moving to Sheffield in 2017.

Please email Sue Bowler if you would like to attend sbowler@lincoln.ac.uk.

Story submitted by Sue Bowler
sbowler@lincoln.ac.uk