Past JRA Winners

As a researcher she is responsible for the implementation of the Belgian part of the European research project SCUBY: SCale-Up diaBetes and hYpertension care (www.scuby.eu). She conducts both qualitative and quantitative research on how we can scale up integrated care for diabetes, hypertension and other chronic diseases in Belgium and Flanders. The focus of this research is on the organization of a primary care practice and on how policy can stimulate the implementation of integrated care. In doing so, she actively collaborates with stakeholders at practice, regional and policy level, as she believes it is important that research is relevant and has impact on the field. She has already published 12 articles in national and international journals and presented her research on multiple national and international conferences. After the SCUBY project she will be a researcher on a new European project: Joint Action on CARdiovascular diseases and Diabetes (JACARDI).
As a coach she supports primary care practices in organizing their practice following the principles of integrated and proactive care, guided by the chronic care model.
As a general practitioner she works in the community health center ‘De Vlier’, in the city of Sint-Niklaas in Flanders. There she cooperates with nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists, midwives, social workers and administrative staff.”

Since 2017, the contract requires GPs to use electronic tools to proactively identify moderate and severe frailty in people aged ≥65 years, and offer interventions to help those identified to stay well and maintain independent living. Little is currently known about GPs’ views of this contractual requirement.
Aim To explore GPs’ views of identifying frailty and offering interventions for those living with moderate or severe frailty.Design and setting A sequential mixed-methods study of GPs in the East Midlands region of England — namely Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Northamptonshire — undertaken between January and May 2019.
Method GPs were made aware of the study via professional organisations’ newsletters and bulletins, GP email lists, and social media, and were invited to complete an online questionnaire. Responses were analysed using descriptive statistics and, based on those
survey responses, GPs with a range of GP and practice characteristics, as well as views on identifying frailty, were selected to participate in a semi-structured telephone interview.
Interview transcripts were analysed using framework analysis.
Results In total, 188 out of 3058 (6.1%) GPs responded to the survey and 18 GPs were interviewed. GPs were broadly supportive of identifying frailty, but felt risk-stratification tools lacked sensitivity and specificity, and wanted evidence showing clinical benefit.
Frailty identification increased workload and was under-resourced, with limited time for, and access to, necessary interventions. GPs felt they lacked knowledge about frailty and more education was required to better understand it.
Conclusion Proactively identifying and responding to frailty in primary care requires GP education, highly sensitive and specific risk-stratification tools, better access to interventions to lessen the impact of frailty, and adequate resourcing to achieve potential
clinical impact.
More: https://bjgp.org/content/71/709/e604

“The UTI Diagnostic Tool Study” UTI (Urinary tract infection) is the most common disease is the primary clinic and its prevalence increases with age (with the exception of a spike among 14-24 years old). According to current guidelines, the diagnosis is clinical but most of the classic studies describing dysuria, frequency and urgency as high value predictors of UTI are from the 60s80s and recent studies rase questions about their predictive value due to the rise in STI (Sexuall transmitted infections) rates and the elusive diagnosis of interstitial cystitis. Misdiagnosis of UTI results in unnecessary use of antibiotics and in some cased untreated STI. My goal is to stratify clinic and laboratory data from which we extract a simple tool (such as centor score) with high sensitivity and high positive predictive value that will guide us to whom we need to send a urine culture and who is appropriate to empiric treatment. In order to achieve this goal, every healthy, non-pregnant women with genitourinary complaint will be asked to participate in the study and fill in a detailed questionnaire, give urine sample for dipstick, urinalysis, urine culture and PCR STD and we will also extract date from her physical examination findings at the doctor’s office. The importance of using antibiotics when required only and open the differential diagnosis to other pathogens and diseases is highly important for reducing antibiotic resistance, STI prevalence and pelvic complication in the population which increase in number.

Since 2019, he leads the still ongoing Broad-Spectrum project, carried out in a scientific collaboration between the Italian National Institute of Health and the University of Cagliari. The aim of the project is to investigate the determinants of antibiotic use in Italian primary care. Peter currently works as a researcher at the department of General Practice at the University of Würzburg in Germany, where he investigates, under the guidance of his PhD supervisor Ildikò Gàgyor, on new management approaches for women with urinary tract infections in primary care. Due to the fact that in Italy it is not possible for GPs to pursue a PhD in General Practice and to go through and academic pathway while General Practice is still not recognized as an academic discipline, with this research award and with his work Peter hopes to give a contribution for the development and growth of academic primary care in Italy and beyond.

The 2021 Vasco da Gama Junior Research Award winner is Peter Konstantin Kurotschka (Italy) for his project “General practitioners’ experiences during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: a critical incident technique study”. Following a robust qualitative methodology, this study gives a unique insight on the challenges faced by the primary care workforce in Italy during March and April 2020, when the pandemic hit the country in an unprecedented manner. The study reveales huge criticalities in the capacity of the healthcare system to take care of patients during a health emergency of the dimensions of COVID-19. At the same time, the study shed light on the many opportunities that Italy have to rebuild a stronger healthcare system, with the core competencies of General Practitioners as its fundamental part.
The study was carried out in a multidisciplinary team of young GPs, epidemiologists, a qualitative methodologist, and a law graduate experienced in medico-legal issues. The authors would like to thank the Giotto Movement for its support. To read the full study results, click here https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ fpubh.2021.623904/full