Evidence gets personal - report from the BMJ (British Medical Journal) March 2009
Report from a James Lind Alliance/Lancet conference:
“How can clinical trials better meet the needs of clinicians and patients?”
The starting point for ensuring that research meets the needs of patients and clinicians is to ensure that trials are planned, conducted, and reported with the needs of patients uppermost. This requires that researchers overcome what Professor Stephen Holgate described as the “communication gap” between healthcare professionals and the public. To date, as Dr Sandy Oliver reported, little research has been done to compare the different perceptions of researchers, clinicians, and patients. One exception to this is a study that found a mismatch between patients’ priorities and those of investigators conducting research into osteoarthritis: while the patients in the study valued research into surgical approaches and education, the bulk of published research explored pharmacotherapy.[3]
.......Ensuring that trials cover interventions, comparisons, and outcomes that matter to patients, increasing patient involvement in the planning and conduct of trials, and attempting to ensure that the populations within trials mimic those in normal practice, are all important stepping stones towards improving the applicability of research.
Currently the NHS asks for random blind clinical trials (RCTs) - which were largely created to test medication drugs and not to test for the clinical setting. RCTs look at the effect of a single intervention (that is the medication drug) and does not test a procedure as a whole. It is also important to note that, often, the research is carried out by the drug company itself which can never be completely impartial.
For complementary therapy the benefits lie in the whole procedure. For example for an aromatherapy treatment, the setting of the treatment room, the massage itself, the placebo effect of talking to a caring expert, the effects of the essential oils, the music the warm towels and the aftercare information given for on going treatment at home are all important parts of the whole procedure and need to be taken into account as a whole. Currently no funds have been put aside by the government/NHS for the study of complementary therapy in clinical practice ~ the bottom line is that you cannot patent clinical practice and therefore recoup the financial outlay.
The people who they have to listen to is the public who pay for the NHS~ but who will hear what the public really has to say and how they feel; and where can your views be gathered and presented to the relevant party?
What do you think about this report? Please tell us
A little bit about me
- Fran Doidge, BSc
- Aromatherapist for 20 years Degree in Physiology and Biochemistry. Would you like to receive complementary therapies on the NHS? We are looking at how this can be done with Get Well UK. NEW - Voluntary Statutory body for all complementary practitioners set up by the DOH ~ the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC).