Chris Burton
Chris Burton is a GP and Professor of Primary Medical Care at the University of Sheffield. His main research and clinical interest is around persistent (“medically unexplained”) physical symptoms but his work extends to broader issues around the intersection of physical and mental health and the processes of diagnosis and reassurance.His research involves evidence synthesis, analysis of routine healthcare data and the development and evaluation of interventions.
Chris became a Section Editor for BMC Family Practice in 2017, after 4 years as an Associate Editor.
Chris became a Section Editor for BMC Family Practice in 2017, after 4 years as an Associate Editor.
The importance of negative results for family medicine
Healthcare-related trials showing positive results of an intervention, whether a drug, a device, or an educational program, are usually published and often publicized. Negative results, however, are not as often discussed. In this blog post, Section Editor of BMC Family Practice Chris Burton discusses a negative result recently published in the journal, why it may have been ineffective, and why it is so important that it was published anyway.
The recently published trial by de Kock, Noben, and colleagues, from the Netherlands, is a good example of something we often see in family medicine: a reasonably-sized trial of a plausible, complex intervention, which produces a negative result. In this case, the paper reports a trial of teaching additional skills to family physicians. The aim of these additional skills was to support people who were currently not working because of poor health to return to work. We know that, in general, being in work is good for well-being (and wealth), so helping people return to work is a worthwhile aim. We also know that family physicians play a role in maintaining patients’ sickness absence, either directly through certification or indirectly by the advice they give for self-management. It is therefore plausible that an educational intervention for family physicians should have an effect. However, the trial found none.
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