Research
Throughout
its history, the practice has added to medical knowledge through
publishing observations and research from the practice.
Initially
such publications typically described unusual cases or treatments
encountered in practice. West’s descriptions of his son’s illness is a
prime example of this and led to his name being given to the syndrome.
More
recently, research has focused on the epidemiology of the practice
population. This involves studying how a disease affects a population.
Such knowledge can be important in understanding how common a disease is
and how it is caused. David Goodridge published a paper on epilepsy 140
years after West’s contribution. It showed that there were many more
people in the community who had suffered from it than previous estimates.
This study led to a long collaboration with the practice and the National
Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London and the National General Practice
Study of Epilepsy. Three doctors training in Neurology submitted MD
degrees partly through work carried out in the practice and further papers
have been published.
Alistair
Howitt has carried out other epidemiological work into diabetes and more
recently he has published a paper, based on his MSc dissertation, on how
patients make difficult treatment choices.
General
practice is becoming an increasingly important area for medical research,
partly because of the need to inform the government and profession of the
most effective ways of using scare NHS resources.
Research
is also becoming the domain of large groups of practices rather than
individual researchers, leading to the formation of research networks. The
practice is an active member of two such networks; the Medical Research
Council Research General Practice Framework, which is just starting a
major study of hormone replacement therapy and StaRNet, a network based in
the South East, through which Dr Mike Morris has recently completed a
study of the management of diabetes in general practice.
Many
of these studies could not have been performed without patients in the
practice giving their time freely for the benefit of others and we would
like to take this opportunity to thank them for it.
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