Impact of a continuing medical education meeting on the use and timing of urgent cancer referrals among general practitioners - a before-after study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Detection of cancer in general practice is challenging because symptoms are diverse. Even so-called alarm symptoms have low positive predictive values of cancer. Nevertheless, appropriate referral is crucial. As 85% of cancer patients initiate their cancer diagnostic pathway in general practice, a Continuing Medical Education meeting (CME-M) in early cancer diagnosis was launched in Denmark in 2012. We aimed to investigate the effect of the CME-M on the primary care interval, patient contacts with general practice and use of urgent cancer referrals.

Methods

A before-after study was conducted in the Central Denmark Region included 396 general practices, which were assigned to one of eight geographical clusters. Practices were invited to participate in the CME-M wit

SUBMITTER: Toftegaard BS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5361715 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature