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Over the last quarter century, non‐medical prescribing in the UK has grown significantly; eight non‐medical professional groups now have authority to prescribe a wide range of medicines, suggesting it could be a potent driver of pharmaceuticalisation. In this article, we present data from a case study of physiotherapists' prescribing practices. UK physiotherapists have had legal rights to prescribe medicines since 2005, but relatively little is known about the contribution they make to expanding patient access to medicines. We approached our study through a lens of governmentality to capture the mentalities and micro‐practices governing physiotherapist non‐medical prescribing. Ethnographic methods were used to gather data from an outpatient orthopaedic service in an NHS Trust in England employing physiotherapist prescribers. From the data, we identified a grid of intelligibility – an organising framework formulated by powerful discourses and technologies of government through which physiotherapist prescribing was acted into being. A primary effect of this grid was the constitution of new physiotherapist subjectivities, mostly as non‐prescribers of medicines contrary to policy intentions, underpinned by a familiar and enduring template of medical professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concepts of patient-centredness and shared decision-making inform expectations that clinicians should display sensitivity to patients' expressed preferences. This study examines the organisation of treatment-related preferences expressed by patients and their partners during clinical consultations for people with localised prostate cancer. A conversation analysis of twenty-eight diagnosis and treatment consultations was conducted with data recorded from four clinical sites across England. When clinicians disaligned from expressions of preference such as directing talk away from expressions, or moving to redress perceived misunderstandings, it caused discordance in the unfolding interaction. This led to couples silencing themselves. Two deviant cases were identified that did not feature the misalignment found in all other collected cases. In these two cases, the interaction remained collaborative. These findings highlight the immediate consequences of expressions of preference being resisted, rejected, and dismissed in a context where clinicians are expected to explore expressed preferences in service of SDM. The deviant case analysis offers an alternative practice to the pattern observed across the collection, offering a comparison between misaligned sequences, and cases where social solidarity was maintained. By acknowledging couple's expressions as valid contributions, rather than acting to inform or correct them, clinicians can create opportunity spaces for discussion around treatment preferences. • Couples regularly expressed treatment-related preferences during consultations. • Clinician disalignment from expressions of preference caused interactional discordance. • This led to couples silencing themselves, indicative of conflict management. • Clinicians inhibited exploration of couples' preferences and viewpoints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines how partners contribute to clinical consultations for people with prostate cancer. It highlights a social practice where a partner responds to talk that addresses a patient. A conversation analysis of twenty-eight prostate cancer treatment and diagnostic consultations was carried out using data collected from four clinical sites across England. The analysis demonstrated that this practice was prosocial and patient enabling. Partners oriented to the patient's primary rights to take their turn as the selected next speaker, only initiating after a substantial delay from the clinician's turn-at-talk. Consequently, the partner consistently opened an opportunity space that the patient took to elaborate upon, or collaborate with the partners' turn as they regularly took up a unified stance resisting the individualised configuration of the encounter. This research highlights the social and clinical utility of partners during these consultations, as they served as important, yet underutilised interactional and informational resources for clinicians and patients. This research indicates a need to reconsider the configuration of these consultations and sanction partners as formal participants. Absent of this, partners will continue to have to work to insert their contributions into consultations while resisting the dyadic structure of these interactions. • Partners were rarely addressed by clinicians and patients and worked to insert their contributions into the consultation. • Partners oriented to the patient's primary rights to respond to talk explicitly addressing patients. • Partners served as an important, yet under-used informational and interactional resource for patient and clinician. • This paper argues for a need to reconsider what it means to enact patient centredness in triadic healthcare encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Clinical practice guidelines produced by NICE – the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – are seen as key mechanisms to regulate and standardise UK healthcare practice, but their development is known to be problematic, and their adoption and uptake variable. Examining what a guideline or health policy means to different audiences, and how it means something to those communities, provides new insight about interpretive discourses. In this paper we present a micro-analysis of the response of healthcare professionals to publication of a single NICE guideline in 2009 which proposed a re-organisation of professional services for chronic non-specific low back pain. Adopting an interpretive approach, we seek to understand both the meaning of the guideline and the socio-political events associated with it. Drawing on archived policy documents related to the development and publication of the guideline, texts published in professional journals and on web-sites, and semi-structured interview data from professionals associated with the debate, we identify a key discourse that positions the management of chronic non-specific low back pain within physician jurisdiction. We examine the emergence of this discourse through policy-related symbolic artifacts taking the form of specific languages, objects and acts. This discourse effectively resisted and displaced the service reorganisation proposed by the guideline and, in so doing, ensured medical hegemony within practice and professional organisations concerned with the management of non-specific low back pain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: Safety-netting involves communicating information to patients about diagnostic uncertainty, the likely time-course of their condition and how to appropriately seek help from a healthcare professional if their condition persists or worsens. Little is known about how physiotherapists communicate safety-netting information to people with low back pain (LBP)., Objectives: This research aimed to use a Safety-Netting Coding Tool (SaNCoT) to explore how physiotherapists communicate safety-netting information to people with LBP., Methods: The SaNCoT was used to conduct a secondary analysis of audio-recordings and transcripts from 79 primary care physiotherapy consultations (41 initial and 38 follow-up) involving 12 physiotherapists and 41 patients with LBP in Southern England. Quantitative data from the SaNCoT were analysed descriptively., Findings: The study found evidence of diagnostic uncertainty in 53 (67%) appointments and no examples of physiotherapists providing patients with specific information about their condition time-course. Eight patients were given safety-netting advice, but most (57.9%, n = 11) episodes of safety-netting advice did not include specific signs and symptoms for patients to monitor. Potential missed opportunities for safety-netting advice were identified in 19 appointments (24.1%) which tended to relate to the patient's associated leg symptoms but also included possible serious pathology., Conclusion: The SaNCoT was successfully used to measure safety-netting communication within physiotherapy consultations and found missed opportunities for providing clear safety-netting advice. Physiotherapists can use the findings to reflect on how they can provide clear safety-netting information to patients with LBP to effectively support patients to self-manage and help them seek appropriate care if their condition deteriorates., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Background: With increased emphasis on self-management in healthcare, clinicians need outstanding skills in offering advice and empowering patients to attain an optimal outcome., Objectives: This study explores how undergraduate physiotherapists acquire knowledge, skills, and confidence to offer advice to patients in clinical practice., Methods: Convenience sampling was used to recruit 50 BSc and MSc pre-registration physiotherapy students across all years of study in one university in southern England, UK. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for first year BSc students ( n  = 13). Six focus groups of mixed BSc and MSc students were conducted, three groups ( n  = 15 students) were mid-training, and three groups ( n  = 22 students) were in their final year., Results: Thematic analysis identified 6 themes: advice content; a patient-centered approach; delivery; acquisitions; perceptions; and uptake of advice. Students placed high value on advice-giving, drawing upon multiple learning opportunities, however they felt under-prepared to deliver this skill in practice. Furthermore, perceptions of their student status, and pressures to perform on graded placements were reported to influence the advice they offered to patients., Conclusions: Developing high-level skills in promoting self-management is essential in physiotherapy, this study highlights the challenges for students to develop these skills. Academic and practice educators must explicitly enable and support students to develop the knowledge and skills to confidently offer high-quality advice to patients.

Objective: Development and test of a culturally sensitive intervention for rheumatology healthcare professionals (HCPs)., Methods: Using a before and after study design, 15 HCPs were recruited to undertake the bespoke intervention from four National Health Service sites across England, in areas serving a diverse population. The intervention was evaluated using two validated outcomes: (i) Patient Reported Physician Cultural Competency (PRPCC); and (ii) Patient Enablement Instrument (PEI), measuring patients' perceptions of their overall healthcare delivery. Additionally, HCPs completed the COM-B questionnaire for capability (C), opportunity (O) and motivation (M) to perform behaviour (B), measuring behaviour change., Results: Two hundred patients were recruited before HCPs undertook the intervention (cohort 1), and 200 were recruited after (cohort 2) from 15 HCPs; after exclusions 178 patients remained in cohort 1 and 186 in cohort 2. Sixty percent of patients identified as white in both recruited cohorts, compared with 29% and 33% of patients (cohorts 1 and 2, respectively) who identified as being of South Asian origin. After the intervention, the COM-B scores indicated that HCPs felt more skilled and equipped for consultations. No significant differences were noted in the average overall cultural competency score between the two cohorts in white patients (57.3 vs 56.8, P = 0.8), however in the South Asian cohort there was a statistically significant improvement in mean scores (64.1 vs 56.7, P = 0.014). Overall, the enablement score also showed a statistically significant improvement following intervention (7.3 vs 4.3, P < 0.001) in the white patients and in the South Asian patients (8.0 vs 2.2, P < 0.001)., Conclusion: This novel study provides evidence for improving cultural competency and patient enablement in rheumatology settings., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology.)

Objectives: Amid a political agenda for integrated, high-value care, the UK is implementing its Low Back and Radicular Pain Pathway. To align care with need, it is imperative to understand the patients' perspective. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to explore how people experience being managed for sciatica within an National Health Service (NHS) pathway., Design: Qualitative interpretative study., Setting: Musculoskeletal Service in an NHS, Primary Care Trust, UK., Participants: The sample comprised 14 people aged ≥18 years with a clinical presentation of sciatica, who were currently under the care of a specialist physiotherapist (the specialist spinal triage practitioner), had undergone investigations (MRI) and received the results within the past 6 weeks. People were excluded if they had previously undergone spinal surgery or if the suspected cause of symptoms was cauda equina syndrome or sinister pathology. Participants were sampled purposively for variation in age and gender. Data were collected using individual semi-structured interviews (duration: 38-117 min; median: 82.6 min), which were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed thematically., Results: A series of problems with the local pathway (insufficient transparency and information; clinician-led decisions; standardised management; restricted access to specialist care; and a lack of collaboration between services) made it difficult for patients to access the management they perceived necessary. Patients were therefore required to be independent and proactive or have agency. This was, however, difficult to achieve (due to the impact of sciatica and because patients lacked the necessary skills, funds and support) and together with the pathway issues, this negated patients' capability to manage sciatica., Conclusions: This novel paper explores how patients experience the process of being managed within a sciatica pathway. While highlighting the need to align with recommended best practice, it shows the need to be more person-centred and to support and empower patient agency., Trial Registration Number: ClinicalTrials.gov reference (UOS-2307-CR); Pre-results., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

Background: Communication in clinical encounters is vital in ensuring a positive experience and outcome for both patient and clinician., Objective: The purpose of this study was to measure verbal communication between physical therapists and patients with back pain during their initial consultation and trial management of the data using a novel, Web-based application., Design: A cross-sectional study was conducted., Methods: Nine musculoskeletal physical therapists and 27 patients with back pain participated in this study. Twenty-five initial consultations were observed, audio recorded, and categorized using the Medical Communications Behavior System. Data were managed using Synote, a freely available application enabling synchronization of audio recordings with transcripts and coded notes., Results: In this sample, physical therapists spoke for 49.5% of the encounter and patients for 33.1%. Providers and patients spent little time overtly discussing emotions (1.4% and 0.9%, respectively). More-experienced clinicians used more "history/background probes," more "advice/suggestion," and less "restatement" than less-experienced staff, although they demonstrated a greater prevalence of talking concurrently and interrupting patients (7.6% compared with 2.6%)., Limitations: Although studies measuring actual behavior are considered to be the gold standard, audio recordings do not enable nonverbal behaviors to be recorded., Conclusion: This study investigated a method for measuring the verbal content of clinical encounters in a physical therapy outpatient setting. The study has directly contributed to developing a research-friendly version of the application (i.e., Synote Researcher). Given the pivotal role of communication in ensuring a positive experience and outcome for both patient and provider, investing time in further developing communication skills should be an on-going priority for providers. Further work is needed to explore affective behaviors and the prevalence of interrupting patients, considering differences in sex and provider experience.

The purpose of this quality improvement initiative was to enhance service delivery and patient experience in a musculoskeletal out-patient setting. A cross-sectional survey, with 6 annual stages, evaluated the musculoskeletal outpatient physiotherapy service in a large National Health Service hospital in Southern England. The population comprised 1095 patients, referred by medical staff to the service from rheumatology, orthopaedics, pain clinic and occupational health departments. The individual clinician-initiated strategies for quality improvement included: cue cards; reminders; reflections and training. The systems-changes comprised revised documentation and booking systems. The primary outcome was patient experience, measured with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy's standardised 'Patients feedback' questionnaire. Attendance data was a secondary outcome. This initiative showed that strategies to motivate individual clinicians to change their behaviour were unsuccessful, whereas system-changes resulted in 32/37 improvements (8 statistically significant) in patient experience. Furthermore, the revised systems resulted in a 6% decrease in wasted appointments. It is essential that clinical services are evaluated through the eyes of their users. This initiative demonstrates the value of service evaluations (alongside research) and the importance of patient feedback to show how it can drive change and positively impact upon health-care experiences. Furthermore, this work has shown that active implementation strategies with systems-level changes produced greater improvements in service quality and patient experience, than simply encouraging and supporting clinicians to change their behaviour., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)