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IVORY
TOWERS RESEARCH: DO THEMES IN MEDICINES INFORMATION LITERATURE REVIEWS REFLECT
THOSE IMPORTANT TO CONSUMERS?
Nicolson
Donald J
On behalf of the Medicines Information Leeds & Keele project
Pharmacy Practice and Medicines Management Group, School of Healthcare,
University of Leeds, LS2 9UT
d.j.nicolson@leeds.ac.uk
Background
The Medicine Information Leeds and Keele (MILK)
project is a systematic review of the effectiveness, role and value of written
patient information leaflets (PIL) for medicines (both leaflets and web-based).
The project has been guided by consumer involvement through a multi-stakeholder
workshop at its outset. Previous research has shown a consumer workshop is a
great opportunity to research consumer-orientated themes about medical
conditions and medicines1.
Aims
To compare the main themes emerging from the workshop with the main themes
in relevant published reviews, for agreement and difference.
Methods
A multi-stakeholder workshop was held before the literature search to allow
consumers’ views to shape the review. Six consumer representatives, six
collaborators and 11 local health-care consumers attended. We recorded the main
themes arising from the workshop during small group-work. This involved asking
participants for their views on the role of PIL, what makes them effective and
what makes them valuable. We searched for systematic reviews of PIL on Medline
and Embase from 1970 to October 2004. Our criterion for inclusion was a
systematic or narrative review focusing on PIL for medicines, or PIL research in
a context other than medicines. This was broad enough to allow for our
assumption that we would identify few (if any) systematic reviews specifically
looking at PIL for medicines. The main themes from the workshop records and
reviews were independently extracted by two researchers and differences were
reconciled by discussion or a third party. We compared these themes using a
novel matrix.
Results
This is work in progress, and the findings presented here are preliminary.
We found three systematic reviews (Buck 1998, Haynes 2002, Koo 2003) and three
narrative reviews (Morris 1979, Arthur 1995, Kenny 1998) which met our inclusion
criteria. Ten broad themes surfaced in the workshop, a number of which were
rarely covered in the published reviews. The oldest review looked at only one
theme arising from the workshop. The most recent review referred to seven themes
emerging from the workshop. No review covered all the themes from the workshop.
Furthermore, six broad themes in the literature were not evoked at all during
the workshop.
Discussion
The results of the comparison highlight a difference between the themes in
previous published reviews and the themes emerging from our workshop. We
anticipate our project will overcome this limitation. It has been proposed that
research and practice will benefit if consumer perspectives are incorporated
into the research design and conduct of research2. The
workshop has enhanced the aims of the MILK project, as well as demonstrating the
value of integrating consumer-orientated themes within the review.
References
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Raynor D, Savage I, Knapp P, Henley J. We are the
experts: people with asthma talk about their medicine information needs. Patient
Education & Counseling 2004;53:167-174.
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Entwistle V. Lay perspectives: advantages for health
research. BMJ 1998;316:463-466.
Presented at the HSRPP Conference 2005, Reading
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