News
SPOT THE DIFFERENCES
7th October 2008
At this year's SACH Symposium, Dr Gail Greig of the Social Dimensions of Health Institute, Universities of St Andrews and Dundee, will be looking at 'The Importance of Context: Accounting for Differences Between Primary Care Teams’.
"There’s a truism in primary care that 'all practices are different'," said Dr Greig. "The same is often said about Community Hospitals - although we can find it difficult to describe the differences. After all, practices/Community Hospitals/ primary care teams have a lot in common.
"Against this contradictory background, practitioners continue to face exhortations to adopt 'best practice' and protocols for doing things as attempts are made to transfer learning done in one setting to all settings. But this approach doesn’t seem to take particular local circumstances and issues into account. Amongst practitioners, this can lead to frustration and a feeling of 'ticking the boxes' to meet externally driven aims.
"For both practitioners and patients, it can leave local issues unaddressed or create new additional problems. For policy makers, policies are often not implemented as intended and/or can have unforeseen results. This is the 'problem of context'."
Dr Greig explained that, in her forthcoming presentation at the SACH Symposium, she will be focusing on why differences between primary care teams arise and why they are necessary. "By thinking about the 'problem of context' differently, we can take a constructive approach to the differences in primary healthcare practice and consider some of the implications of this for practitioners and policy makers," Dr Greig concluded.
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