Ray Fitzpatrick's 1996-97 Annual Research Report
Ray Fitzpatrick (Faculty Fellow). With Crispin Jenkinson (Institute of Health Sciences, Oxford) he began two projects in relation to Motor Neurone Disease. One project, funded by the MND Association is intended to develop better methods of assessing the progress of the disease. The other project, funded by Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, will monitor a cohort of patients with MND throughout Europe. These projects are important because there is increasing optimism about treatments for the disease and the evaluation of outcomes in trials is therefore essential. With Mel Bartley (University College London) and David Firth he began a project funded by ESRC to investigate social variations in women’s health. He completed two systematic reviews for the NHS Central R & D Programme. One review, with colleagues at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, has assessed all the available English-language evidence of costs and outcomes of prostheses for total hip replacement surgery. The other review (with colleagues at Brunel and Leicester University) makes recommendations about how the quality of life of patients should be assessed in medical research.
Publication
‘A Pragmatic Defence of Health Status Measures’, Health Care Analysis, 4, 1996.
‘Alternative Approaches to the Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life’, in A Offer (ed.), In Pursuit of the Quality of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
(with M Boulton) ‘Qualitative Research in Health Care: 1. The Scope and Validity of Methods’, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 2, 1996.
(with M Boulton and C Swinburn) ‘Qualitative Research in Health Care: 2. A Structures Review and Evaluation of Studies’, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 2, 1996.
(with M Weiss, D Scott, M Goldacre) ‘Pressures on the General Practitioner and Decisions to Prescribe’, Family Practice, 13, 1996.
‘Questionnaire Design’, in P Pynsent, J Fairbank, A Carr (eds.), Assessment Methodology in Orthopaedics. London: Butterworth Heinemann, 1997.
‘Society and Changing Patterns of Disease’, Measuring Health Outcomes’, ‘Organizing and Funding Health Care’, chapters in G Scambler (ed.), Sociology as Applied to Medicine (revised 4th edition). London: W B Saunders, 1997.
(with J Dawson, D Murray, A Carr) ‘The Problem of ‘Noise’ in Monitoring Patient-Based Outcomes: Generic, Disease-Specific and Site-Specific Instruments for Total Hip Replacement’, Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 1, 1996.
(with D White) ‘Public Participation in the Evaluation of Health Care’, Health and Social Care in the Community, 5, 1997.
(with V Peto, C Jenkinson) ‘Self Reported Health Status and Access to Health Services in a Community Sample with Parkinson’s Disease’, Disability and Rehabilitation, 19, 1997.
(with M Weiss) ‘Challenges to Medicine: the Case of Prescribing’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 19. 1997.