In a recent study by Desai et al published in the journal Sexually Transmitted infection it was estimated that the annual cost of treating genital warts in general practice and genitourinary clinics was approximately £16.8 million. Most of this is potentially preventable if the government chooses the quadrivalent Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine which includes HPV typed 6 and 11 which are the commonest cause of genital infections in addition to types 16 and 18 which are the main causes of cervical cancer. Unfortunately the Department of Health currently advocates vaccination with a vaccine containing types 16 and 18 only which would not protect against genital warts and is also more expensive.
Category: Viruses
Update on ongoing project funded by STIRF
An assessment of patients’ satisfaction with their HIV care
Project STIRF 012
People with HIV are living longer, healthier lives due to advances in treatments. Their healthcare needs, therefore, have changed and doctors and nurses need to have the knowledge and skills to meet those needs. The project funded by STIRF aims to find out what patients attending an HIV outpatient clinic want from the service and how well it is provided. The team started out by trying to find out whether there was an established way of measuring HIV patients satisfaction with there care and if a questionnaire already existed that could be used. Some of questionnaires which had been used in the past did not seem to be relevant to the patients today.
Since then the team have held focus groups with patients to ask them what questions they would like included and what would motivate them to fill in a questionnaire. Once the questionnaire has been tested on a small group of people, a larger survey will be conducted and the results analysed, to find out how happy HIV patients are with their outpatient service and what they would like to see changed. We hope to find the right tools so that a listening exercise can be turned into an effective plan of action.