BJGP Interviews

Today, we’re speaking to Dr Garth Funston, a GP and Clinical Senior Lecturer in Primary Care Cancer Research at Queen Mary University of London.
Title of paper: Using large language models to identify pre-diagnostic clinical features of ovarian cancer from healthcare records: a population-based case-control study
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0366
Most women with ovarian cancer present with symptoms, but many symptoms are recorded only in free text healthcare records and missed by studies and clinical decision support tools that rely on coded data. We found that using large language models (LLMs) to extract symptoms from free text records substantially increased symptom detection and strengthened associations with ovarian cancer. Incorporating LLM-extracted symptom information into research and clinical decision tools may support identification of women at higher risk of cancer and aid appropriate investigation.

Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.
Speaker A
00:00:00.800 - 00:00:50.940
Hi and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for listening to this podcast today.

In today's episode, we're talking to Dr. Garth Funston, who is an academic GP and clinical senior Lecturer in Primary Care Research at Queen Mary University of London.

We're here to talk about his recent paper in the BJDP which is titled Using Large Language Models to Identify Pre Diagnostic Clinical Features of Ovarian and Cancer from Healthcare Records.

So, Garth, thanks so much for talking to us again today, but I wonder, just before we get into the AI side of this paper, can you briefly explain the clinical problem you're trying to address here with ovarian cancer diagnosis in general practice?

Speaker B
00:00:51.500 - 00:01:55.010
So most women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed after they develop symptoms and see their doctor. The challenge is that most symptoms are really non specific. There's no real red flag symptoms for ovarian cancer.

That makes it a real clinical challenge for the GP to kind of recognize it and perform tests.

So the symptoms are things like abdominal and pelvic pain, persistent bloating, urinary urgency and frequency, things that we see really frequently in gp. So knowing when to consider ovarian cancer is the big challenge.

And we know that certainly a proportion of women see their GP multiple times before the diagnosis. Now we're lucky for ovarian cancer in that we have reasonably good triage tests and CA125 and transvaginal ultrasound.

So the challenge really is to identify women with these non specific symptoms early so as we can work out who to test and hopefully improve early diagnosis and on outcomes in that way.

Speaker A
00:01:55.250 - 00:02:14.530
Yeah, and I'm sure you're well aware of sort of the body work around this area and people like Willie Hamilton, who's done work around early diagnosis of ovarian cancer, along with Claire Bankhead, and they did some really interesting work around things like bloating, didn't they? But that was slightly different, I think, and a little bit that's some time ago now, isn't it?

Speaker B
00:02:14.930 - 00:02:39.230
Yeah, it was some time ago. I think all of that is, you know, fundamental and still holds true.

And they did a lot of work around things like IBS and in women over, over 50 and things like that that are kind of these subtle signs that we need to be aware of with ovarian cancer.

So, yeah, we know there's lots of features that are associated with ovarian cancer, but it's recognizing when to invest to get those features because they're so common.

Speaker A
00:02:39.630 - 00:02:49.310
Yeah. And do you think that's why it's described as difficult to diagnose early in general practice? Is it because the symptoms are so common?

What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker B
00:02:49.390 - 00:03:48.750
I think there's a few reasons.

I think ovarian cancer used to be called, certainly in the media, the kind of the silent killer and terminology, which I really, really frustrates me, because we know it's not. We know that most women of symptoms for diagnosis. We actually know that from this paper and other papers that are symptoms in early stage cancer.

But that kind of thought around ovarian cancer still holds. Secondly, the symptoms are nonspecific, they're reasonably common. I mean, you know, I probably see a.

A patient with abdominal pain most days and it's kind of working out which ones to investigate for ovarian cancer. Yeah. And so I think those are the main things. And thirdly, it's, you know, it's not the most common common cancer.

GP will see people probably only encounter a case of ovarian cancer every three to five years, a new case. And that's the extra challenge. It's kind of suspecting it when it's a rare thing in primary care.

Speaker A
00:03:49.100 - 00:04:03.500
Yeah. And one thing I found really interesting about this work is that you're using free text clinical records rather than just coded data.

So can you tell us a little bit about the data you accessed here and why it was so important to use this free text data?

Speaker B
00:04:04.220 - 00:05:09.600
So a lot of the work that we do with primary care data focuses on coded data and certainly within the uk, because that's really the data we can actually access within UK for research purposes. But up to 80% of clinical information is not in that coded format, it's in the free text.

And work from people like Sarah Price in the past have shown that often subtle things that we need to pick up are in the free text and GPS don't code that.

So it's something I've been really keen to use in research for many years now to try and look at what extra information is there in the free text that could help us in both research and clinical practice and kind of picking up these cancers. And the data we accessed was from the United States, it was from healthcare clinics associated with the University of Washington.

And that included kind of coded data, but also the free text medical records of patients which had been anonymized and were accessed in a kind of a safe and appropriate way.

Speaker A
00:05:10.000 - 00:05:40.140
Yeah.

And I think a lot of clinical staff listening to this will certainly, certainly appreciate that a Lot goes into the notes that we just type in that doesn't really get coded. So it's phenomenal that you're able to access that data.

And this paper uses large language models or LLMs, which some people might associate, associate with tools like ChatGPT, but just at a very basic level. Can you just talk us through what actually is a large language model and what sort of it was used for in this, in this study?

Speaker B
00:05:40.950 - 00:06:49.130
Large language models, lots of people use them on a daily basis. Absolutely right.

Things like ChatGPT, they're essentially a tool for our purposes which we use to extract information from the free text medical records. Now natural language processing approaches have been used actually for many years, kind of rule based approaches.

Other models, these require lots of training. You need to lots of highly annotated records and notes to train the models.

Advantage of large language models, things like GPT, is they need less annotated notes and we did still do some of that, but they require less and that makes them much easier to apply and use in practice. We use them in this setting to effectively pull out key information on symptoms.

We predefined a list of 17 symptoms from the literature which were associated with ovarian cancer and we used the large language models to go through the notes, pull out information on those symptoms that we could use in the study alongside the coded data.

Speaker A
00:06:50.090 - 00:07:03.350
And I think that as we've been discussing, these large language models are probably really useful for this kind of data. I think especially because a lot of general practice is narrative and contextual as we've been discussing as well.

Speaker B
00:07:03.350 - 00:07:38.940
Yeah, I think, I mean there's two challenges with using free text data. One is access requirements because there's lots of concerns around confidentiality. The other is just the volume of it.

You've got these massive records that you know, contain lots of information, lots of writing, go back years. How do you actually process that to find the key information that you need?

I think large language models are a really useful tool here because with a bit of training you can use them to actually extract the information that's pertinent to your kind of question.

Speaker A
00:07:39.340 - 00:07:48.620
So let's go into what you found and I'm really interested to know about what kind of patterns or features was this model able to identify before an ovarian cancer diagnosis.

Speaker B
00:07:49.180 - 00:09:06.690
So we looked at 17, 17 features. We find actually that 14 of the features were more frequently recorded within the free text and coded...

Today, we’re speaking to Dr Clare Macdonald, an Academic Clinical Lecturer in General Practice based at the University of Birmingham.
Title of paper: Complex social needs and maternal postnatal care: what can primary care do?
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2026.0069
Throughout the discussion we use the terms ‘woman’ and ‘women’, but we know that not all those who give birth will identify as women and intend this to mean all those who give birth.
Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.

Speaker A
00:00:00.480 - 00:00:51.740
Hello and welcome to BJ GP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate Editors of the Journal. Thanks for listening to this podcast today.

In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Claire MacDonald. Claire is an academic clinical lecturer in general practice, and she's based at the University of Birmingham.

We're here today to talk about the editorial she's just published in the May issue of the bjgp, and it's titled Complex Social Needs and Maternal Postnatal Care. What Can Primary Care Do?

So, hi, Clare, it's lovely to meet you and to talk about this brilliant editorial, but before we get into the editorial itself, I wonder if you can just talk us through what you actually mean by complex social needs in the context of postnatal care.

Speaker B
00:00:51.980 - 00:02:21.290
Yeah.

So I think when we talk about social complexity in the postnatal population, we're talking about women who have multiple factors that might be influencing how they can access care or influencing the clinical and social risks that they have. So for most people, the time after they've had a baby results in some social change.

Even in the most straightforward, most brilliantly supported, most physically well person, there are big social changes. And that is a period of a complex time to navigate and finding your way and your identity as a family with a new baby and so on.

When we talk about complex social needs, we're talking about women who face other aspects of adversity.

So it might be that they have housing instability, it might be that they have experienced domestic abuse or they continue to experience domestic abuse, that they have a history of safeguarding issues, safeguarding for themselves or safeguarding concern, concerns about other children or other family members.

And when we see women who have overlapping social risk factors that produces this kind of network of complexity that puts them at compounded additional risk and they need additional help in navigating their health needs in that time.

Speaker A
00:02:21.450 - 00:02:47.310
And I wonder why you felt that this was an important issue to highlight right now. So is there anything in particular that makes you think that this is the right time to sort of look into this?

I know that there's a complex picture in terms of sort of maternal care, and if we look at things like the cost of living crisis, which is compounding a lot of the pressures that people are facing. But talk me through what your impetus was in thinking about this as a now issue.

Speaker B
00:02:48.110 - 00:05:26.470
Yeah, that's right.

So maternity services are really high profile in the news a lot at the moment, but from a secondary care perspective, and quite rightly, there's a spotlight on the poor care that some women and their families and their babies receive from secondary care. And there are, you know, huge pieces of work being done to improve that, to improve outcomes and to improve people's experiences.

But that focus tends to be on intrapartum care.

So the care that people receive in hospital around the time of birth, sometimes there's a little bit of focus on antenatal care as well and reducing risk during pregnancy, there's a lot less focus on what looks like the less exciting time of preconception care and then postnatal care. So after women get discharged from maternity services, we know that they're often left feeling a little bit isolated in the healthcare context.

Some qualitative research that we've done in the past, looking at women's experiences of postnatal care, women told us that they were surprised about they'd had so many appointments during pregnancy and then so much healthcare retention in the first few days after birth, and then they were just surprised. No, you know, they had a baby and no one was really interested in their health anymore. And that genuinely came as a surprise to them.

We know that maternal mortality in the uk, which, thankfully, in absolute numbers, is. Is quite small, but it's certainly higher than it could be and maybe should be, particularly compared to other kind of similar European countries.

And there are actually more maternal deaths postnatally, so in the sort of later postnatal period, six weeks to a year after birth, than there are in that sort of antenatal, intrapartum and early postnatal period. And all of the political drive tends to be about reducing maternal mortality in its traditional definition of being up to six weeks after birth.

But as GPs, where we can really have an impact is in those late maternal deaths.

And of course, very few of us, thankfully, will be involved in the care of a woman who dies in that period, because they are small in absolute numbers. But there are all the women who do not die, but have those risk factors and have that complexity.

And the longer they live with those sort of adverse health conditions and adverse social conditions, that is dramatically reducing their quality life course health. And we can really step in, in that postnatal period to look at how we can influence that.

Speaker A
00:05:26.870 - 00:05:49.080
Yeah, and you've mentioned about the kind of care that women get in during their pregnancy. And sometimes, I'm sure for some women, the postnatal period can feel already pretty fragmented for those reasons.

But how do you think that that fragmentation can become amplified for women with complex social needs? Do you have any thoughts about that?

Speaker B
00:05:50.280 - 00:08:25.320
Absolutely. So a Lot of people will know how to contact their gp, right?

I think if you ask people, most people have probably got that number saved in their phone or they know where their GP practice is.

But after you have a baby, women are then given all these kind of new healthcare professionals who are interested and involved and it's impossible to know how that all fits together.

So the midwife will typically follow women up for that kind of, you know, 10 to 14 days postnatally, usually just at the time the midwife is giving you the final sign off appointment. Within a day or two, you have an appointment with the health visitor, which again is somebody new, and then you might have a follow up.

For example, if a woman's had a third degree tear or is having some additional hospital follow up because of hypertension or gestational diabetes, then the hospital are involved and then they come back to the GP.

And I often feel like, for us as GPs, women, as soon as they're pregnant, they can generally self refer to the midwife and they get kind of lifted out of the primary care system to an extent.

We might not see them through their whole pregnancy, then they have a baby, we might or might not get a discharge summary that gives us some details about the birth and then we invite them for their postnatal consultation and in that time, you know, they've had an entire pregnancy, a huge life changing event, and then we get to see them for this one appointment. And it's so complicated.

Often for women who are not sure where they're going to get their next meal from, how can they be giving any kind of cognitive time to figuring out if the midwife told the health visitor and if the health visitor told the GP and if they're worried that their bleeding's gone on for a bit too long, do they try and phone the woman who came on Thursday or the woman who came on Monday, or do they come back to their gp?

We're asking a lot and we also place a lot of burden on women to retell their story because information transfer is not always timely, it's not always sufficiently detailed.

And again, for women who are living in more precarious social situations, that burden then of having to, you know, they're juggling and the, you know, the mental load of everything they're trying to figure out. And then we're asking them, can you remember if your blood pressure was high during your pregnancy?

Whereas we should know that we should have that information from those other services. So that fragmentation in services really means that the burden is unduly placed on women to kind of patch that up.

And we need to find a better way of dealing with that.

Speaker A
00:08:25.640 - 00:08:38.260
One of the things I think that comes through really strongly is that some of the women with the greatest needs often face the biggest barriers, care. And what kind of barriers are we talking about here that these women are facing?

Speaker B
00:08:38.980 - 00:10:06.270
The Embrace report, which is well, well worth a look at at least their infographics, I think for every gp, it's just a...

Today, we’re speaking to Dr Eliza Hutchinson, a dermatology registrar and academic clinical fellow based at the Centre for Applied Excellence in Skin and Allergy Research at the University of Bristol.
Title of paper: Eczema, acne, and psoriasis in people with skin of colour: a qualitative UK-based study
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0720
This study is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to explore the experiences of living with an inflammatory dermatosis specifically in people with skin of colour. We generated eight themes important to participants: delayed or missed diagnosis; preferences regarding healthcare professionals; lack of online information and social media use; misunderstandings in cultural communities; concerns about treatment and lack of research; complementary medicine use; experiences and impact of dyspigmentation; and challenges with structural racism. These findings offer insight into the complex experiences and challenges faced by UK adults with skin of colour living with eczema, acne, and psoriasis. Our practical points for primary care clinicians are a step towards facilitating mutual understanding and improving care for people with skin of colour.

Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.

Speaker A
00:00:00.560 - 00:00:53.150
Hi and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the BJGP. In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Eliza Hutchinson.

Eliza is a dermatology registrar and an academic clinical fellow and she's based at the Centre for Applied Excellence in Skin and Skin Allergy Research at the University of Bristol. We're here to talk about the paper she's just published in the bjgp and the paper is titled Eczema Acne and Psoriasis in People with Skin of Color.

A Qualitative UK based Study. So, Eliza, it's lovely to meet you and thanks again for joining us to talk about this paper.

But before we talk about the paper itself, I'm just wondering what made you specifically interested in researching skin conditions in skin of color?

Speaker B
00:00:53.550 - 00:01:34.700
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

So I think people with skin of color have been and still are massively underrepresented in kind of medical curricula, learning resources, clinical trials. And I certainly remember when I was at medical school, I don't think I had any teaching on diverse skin tones at all.

And so it was as I sort of learned more dermatology, I just became very aware that they are so underrepresented. And I think earlier work in this area, I really tried to improve education for medical students and healthcare professionals around skin of color.

That was kind of my starting point.

And then I realised actually there's very little, if anything actually on the experiences of people with skin of colour, which is kind of what led me to this project.

Speaker A
00:01:35.820 - 00:01:38.380
And you work in dermatology, is that right?

Speaker B
00:01:38.460 - 00:01:42.300
Yes, yes, I'm a dermatology registrar based in the Bristol Bath area.

Speaker A
00:01:42.540 - 00:02:06.890
Great. So it's wonderful to have your expertise in this especially.

And we may get into this sort of about sort of your perspective from secondary care as well, looking back into general practice as well. But this paper focuses on eczema, acne and psoriasis and these are conditions that we see a lot as gps.

So why did you feel that this was an important area to look at for people with skin of colour?

Speaker B
00:02:07.290 - 00:02:41.470
Yes, I mean, as you said, we know that skin conditions are super common.

They make up over 14% of GP consultations and eczema, acne and psoriasis are some of the most common inflammatory skin conditions we see and we know that they have a significant burden on everyone that experiences them.

But I think particularly in people with skin of colour, we already know that these people experience kind of increasing things like Dispigmentation, so skin tone getting lighter or darker from their skin condition. And yeah, I think I just wanted to focus on some of the more common conditions that are seen kind of day to day in primary care.

Speaker A
00:02:42.110 - 00:02:54.890
And this was a qualitative study and you emphasized that you really wanted to understand the experiences of people here. So talk us through a bit what you did. You spoke to people who had these conditions and had skin of colour?

Speaker B
00:02:55.050 - 00:03:26.060
Yes. So we recruited using online methods for a couple of reasons, but really wanted to get kind of diverse range of experiences from across the uk.

So we started off with an online survey and that was open to people of all skin tones. And we have written this up as a separate paper which should be out hopefully in the next few months.

But based on these responses, we then kind of purposefully recruited people with skin of color to take part in an online one to one interview. And so we spoke to 20 different people with skin of colour as part of this.

Speaker A
00:03:26.460 - 00:03:40.300
And I think one of the really interesting things that came out and is running as a strong theme through the paper is that skin conditions can present really differently in skin of colour. Can you explain a bit about what that means in practice as well?

Speaker B
00:03:40.700 - 00:04:49.210
Yeah. So we know that skin conditions can look and behave very differently in people with skin of colour compared to white skin.

So for example, eczema is typically in a kind of flexural distribution in people with white skin, so like in the elbow creases behind the knees.

But in people with skin of colour it might be more likely to be on the extensor surfaces, it might be in a sort of discoid type pattern, so kind of well defined round patches or sort of a follicular pattern is another one we see. So if you look at medical textbooks and what we're taught at medical school, we just don't see pictures of these presentations.

And I think another big thing is obviously redness is much less obvious in skin of colour. So that's typically what we would associate with skin inflammation is redness and it is much less obvious.

And instead in darker skin tones it might look kind of purpley. Brownie might not be as obvious. And certainly in the interviews we found that patients were aware of this as well.

So they were looking at their own skin and not picking up that it was kind of actively inflamed. They didn't know what it was and they'd go and see a GP or another healthcare professional in primary care and they also wouldn't know.

And then it's just kind of leading to Delayed diagnosis, misdiagnoses.

Speaker A
00:04:50.140 - 00:05:16.780
Yeah, And I think that's certainly something. So the people you spoke to described these delays in diagnosis and also this uncertainty from clinicians.

And I do wonder if that is reflected in what we learn and what the wider public understand is what inflammation might look like as well. So I wonder what really stood out to you from these experiences.

So how did people and clinicians sort of navigate those delays and uncertainty as well?

Speaker B
00:05:17.320 - 00:05:44.760
What was quite shocking was in terms of the misdiagnosis a lot of the time, infection and infestation.

So, for example, scabies was a big one that people were misdiagnosed with, and that in some circumstances did lead to kind of stigmatisation, psychological distress, embarrassment, and then people were more afraid to seek help. Further delays in diagnosis. Yeah, I think that was the thing that struck me the most in terms of this problem.

Speaker A
00:05:45.240 - 00:06:00.040
And you've mentioned this, you talked about dyspigmentation, and that came through as well very strongly in the interviews. And I think that's probably a problem that's specific to skin of color as well.

And can you talk through why that came up as such an important issue for patients in this study?

Speaker B
00:06:00.760 - 00:06:46.890
Yeah, of course. So I think we already know that dyspigmentation.

So skin tone usually getting darker, but sometimes lighter as a result of skin inflammation, we know that it is more common in darker skin tones just because they've got more melanin there to start with. But the thing that struck me in these interviews was just the profound impact that this can have on patients.

So embarrassment, isolation, body dysmorphia. There's a lot of misunderstanding as well, kind of within certain communities about what causes it.

And some people experience negative comments from within their own community, from friends and family, which really exacerbated that kind of psychosocial impact even more. And obviously, skin tone is massively tied into kind of identity, and the impact on people's wellbeing was just. Yeah, it was huge.

Speaker A
00:06:47.690 - 00:06:58.490
And coming from a general practice perspective, it sometimes feels like the treatment options for dyspigmentation are really...

Today, we’re speaking to Dr Tori Ford, a qualitative researcher based at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.
Title of papers: ‘Accumulative Experiences: Navigating Healthcare for Recurrent Vulvovaginal Thrush from Patient and Clinician Perspectives’ and ‘It’s not just thrush, it’s recurrent thrush’: Patient and Clinician Perspectives on Diagnosing Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis’.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0437 and https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0531
Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.
Speaker A
00:00:01.280 - 00:01:15.200
Hi, and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the associate editors of the journal. Thanks again for listening to this podcast today.

In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Tori Ford, who is a qualitative researcher based at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. We're going to talk today about two linked papers that she and her team have published here in the bjgp.

The first one is titled Accumulative Navigating Healthcare for Recurrent Vulvovaginal Thrush from Patient and Clinician Perspectives. And the second paper is it's not just thrush, it's recurrent thrush.

Patient and Clinician Perspectives on Diagnosing Recurrent Vulva Vaginal Candidiasis. So, Tori, thanks very much for joining us here today.

And this might come from a slightly unscientific perspective, but my feeling is that I'm seeing a lot more recurrent thrush in practice. And we know that it's incredibly common. I think, despite that, it's not something we hear discussed very often in primary care research.

So my first question is, what made you want to study it?

Speaker B
00:01:15.520 - 00:01:54.060
So, like you say, recurrent thrush is an increasingly common condition. We know that 1.2 million women in the UK live with it, 6% of people globally, and I just happen to have been one of them.

So my paper came out of lived experience of living with recurrent thrush over many years and having a diagnostic journey of, you know, seeing different healthcare professionals looking for answers. And like you say, those feelings of shame and stigma that keep you feeling alone were all too familiar for me.

So that's what actually led me into starting my PhD, looking at recurrent thrush and then wanting to hear other patient experiences as well.

Speaker A
00:01:54.460 - 00:02:22.220
And we're looking at two of your papers here that were published in the bjgp, and they're both looking at the patient and the clinician perspective.

And one thing that comes through really strongly in both papers is that recurrent thrush is often treated as if it's just repeated acute episodes rather than a condition in its own right. Why do you think that that distinction matters to patients and probably to clinicians as well, or should do?

Speaker B
00:02:22.380 - 00:03:55.420
I think when we hear about thrush, it's often something that's seen as trivial or mundane, and that's often because it's through this lens of acute, transient, episodic, episod, and most of the time it is right. 75% Of people with Vaginas will have thrush at some point in their life.

It's usually self managed over the counter with pharmacy care and symptoms resolved within a few days.

But where recurrent thrush differs is when those symptoms keep coming back so that itching, burning pain and irritation becomes sometimes cyclical, sometimes repetitive. And I spoke to three or two patients who all had different durations of heat know, happening every two weeks, every month.

And what they often found was because they were accessing fragmented care.

So, you know, going to the pharmacy, sometimes going to the gp, sometimes maybe seeing sexual health, it was often seen as again, that mundane, one off, trivial case. And it was really hard to trace those patterns across care, especially due to a lack of continuity. Right.

If you're trying to track a pattern but nobody is following you up, it's really difficult to, to capture those. So I think it's a few layers of one.

I explore how these sort of social dimensions keep it seen as something maybe less long term, but then also in the ways that sort of care was fragmented made it harder for those patterns to be picked up and then to transition the care moving away from, you know, acute one off prescriptions of an antifungal medication to something that required repeat, repetitive, enduring, you know, testing, treatment, retesting of treatments.

Speaker A
00:03:56.060 - 00:04:09.970
Absolutely. And I think what's interesting is that your papers describe recurrent thrush as something that's accumulative and cyclical over time.

And you mentioned that it's not just these sort of one off episodes. Can you explain what patients meant by that?

Speaker B
00:04:10.210 - 00:05:13.850
Yeah.

So often, I think when we talk about healthcare, journeys are presented in a way that's quite linear and straightforward that, you know, you see a healthcare professional, you get treatment, you go home, you start to feel better. But with recurrence, something interesting happens where people aren't, you know, returning to the start.

It's not that you go back to a blank page and then restart your healthcare journey every time you're carrying with you everything, everything that's amassed through healthcare encounters, what you've seen online, what you discuss with friends, and that is all carrying through to those consultations.

And I think what was really important there was acknowledging that for many people there was a lot to unpack there and often they felt that it wasn't being acknowledged in those clinical spaces. It was seen as, oh, it's just thrush. And that's why in one of the papers the title is, it's not just thrush, it's recurrent thrush.

And that's a quote from One of the participants who was speaking about the importance of labeling and distinguishing this condition, especially in terms of the impacts it had on people's lives and also the approaches and pathways that would be needed to properly treat it.

Speaker A
00:05:14.330 - 00:05:32.570
And this is an issue that we see across clinical care and women's healthcare. But a lot of participants described feeling dismissed or not listened to.

And I wanted to just get your perspective from your wider sort of work in this area is how much of that reflected wider issues in women's health care, do you think?

Speaker B
00:05:33.170 - 00:06:46.980
Yeah, I mean, we know there's increasing conversations, right, with the women's health strategy, with the Cumberlage report, about how people's pain is often dismissed based on their gender. And that definitely came across in the studies. But I think what was interesting was that both patients and clinicians were aware of this.

And something that is quite interesting was in the diagnostic paper, we look at sort of those moments where there were sort of miscommunication or differing expectations between patients and clinicians, clinicians, where clinicians were, you know, operating on a standard guideline that requires two swabs, two positive swabs for a thrush within a year to diagnose recurrent thrush.

But when that wasn't communicated to the patient, of being told we need to accumulate these number of swabs, what the patients thought was happening was, oh, they're swabbing me again, they're not listening to me, they don't believe me.

So it was interesting where the dismissal was often in those moments of, you know, it wasn't healthcare professionals saying, this isn't important, or please don't come see me about this. It was really in those sort of small details where patients were operating on one framework and clinicians on another.

And there were these gaps in communication. And that's why our papers seek to address some of those gaps with some recommendations as well.

Speaker A
00:06:47.620 - 00:07:04.640
Yeah, and as you mentioned, one of the papers is called it's not just thrush, it's recurrent thrush.

And I wonder what you felt were the key challenges around actually recognizing recurrence in primary care, as opposed to it just being a, a one off episode.

Speaker B
00:07:04.720 - 00:09:30.220
There's multiple layers to this, I think, in terms of the. The papers are sort of split in terms of the diagnostic journey and then the healthcare journey.

But that's sort of an artificial split in some ways, because what we saw a lot was, you know, patients trying to seek out continuity of care to get someone to notice the pattern that they were starting to see and assign a label to it and we saw some hesitancy with this in clinicians who said, you know, I'm not going to use the term recurrence because that sounds like it's something serious or sounds like it's chronic. And they saw that being helpful.

But then for patients they found that really challenging because they said, you know, they just see it as thrush, they just see it as a one off case, they're not recognizing it when often...

Today, we’re speaking to Dr Charlotte Morris, a GP and academic based at the University of Manchester.
Title of paper: Experiences of primary care for people with dementia from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas: a qualitative study
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0407
Existing national guidance recommends primary care-led dementia health care, but little is known about the experience of this for people living in socioeconomically deprived areas. This study highlights that people with dementia, and their carers, in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas want to maintain identity and understand their decline. Support from healthcare services often diminishes over time, with difficulties accessing and navigating healthcare systems when needed. There was uncertainty about primary care’s role in dementia health care. Clearer communication and proactive support from primary care may improve experiences for these patients.

Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.

Speaker A
00:00:00.320 - 00:00:32.850
Hello and welcome to BJ GP Interviews. I'm Ewan Lawson and I'm the editor of the BJ gp. Thanks for listening to the podcast today. In this episode, we are speaking to Charlotte Morris.

Charlotte is a GP and doctoral research fellow at the University of Manchester and we have recently published her paper, Experiences of Primary Care for People with Dementia from Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Areas A Qualitative Study.

So, Charlotte, first of all, what I'd like to ask you is how did you come to focus on people with dementia in deprived areas specifically, and what surprised you most in the interviews?

Speaker B
00:00:33.170 - 00:02:03.470
Thanks, Ewan. Thanks so much to you and the BJGP for inviting me to do the podcast and publishing the paper.

So, I guess my interest in people with dementia started when I finished my foundation training and I did a clinical fellowship year in London where I worked on a ward with people with dementia specifically. And at that time I wanted to be a care of the elderly doctor.

But I was struck by how many people kept coming in and out of hospital with dementia regularly. We'd spend ages trying to get them home. They go home for maybe one or two days and then sadly come back on this cycle.

And I think in reality, a lot of those people would probably have been better at home, even if that shortened their lives very sadly.

And it made me realise I wanted to work in the community with people with dementia, trying to improve healthcare in terms of advanced care planning and kind of planning for progression. So that's where my interest in dementia came in.

And I work in a practice in a relatively deprived area of Greater Manchester, and I always had an interest in health equity for kind of various reasons and health equity in terms of various lenses as well.

So when I was designing my PhD project, I decided to kind of focus on both aspects, so health inequalities in terms of deprivation and primary care for people with dementia.

Speaker A
00:02:03.870 - 00:02:08.270
I mean, I know we're going to touch another on some other stuff, but. Yeah. What surprised you most in the interviews?

Speaker B
00:02:09.390 - 00:02:47.530
I think in terms of what surprised me most in the interviews, I think I was actually struck by how much people wanted more health care from their primary care teams. It's not like they felt they were getting the best care or they were really kind of thrilled with what they were getting in lot of times.

But they were actually very trusting of their primary care teams and they really, really wanted more of that health care, which kind of struck me, really.

And I actually found it kind of quite touching and humbling, as a practicing GP myself, to know that we were really valued and that the care that we provide, people tend to want more of it rather than less.

Speaker A
00:02:47.610 - 00:03:21.390
Yeah, so that leads in nicely, because I wanted to ask you about one of the themes in your paper, which was the kind of proactive continuity.

And several of your participants described your wanting their GP to take the initiative, you know, to call them, to know them, so just to anchor their sense of self while the dementia progresses. There was a one man who had Alzheimer's who named it Ali. Was a kind of a. Was a striking example. You know, what, what kind of sense?

What does that tell us about what primary care needs to be doing? I mean, you mentioned there about how much it was appreciated, but what kind of. What do you think they can do more of?

Speaker B
00:03:22.000 - 00:04:42.080
Yeah, I think that kind of theme of proactive continuity splits into two, really. So I think the idea of being proactive is really important and people wanted their GPs not only to know them, but to actively contact them.

Sorry, I mean, not just their gps, actually their whole primary care team recognising that we all work together in our practices as well as that proactivity.

They wanted somebody who knew them, knew their family, knew their kind of history, knew the kind of outside of their life, rather than just their medical condition or their dementia. And that was really striking and came through kind of very strongly from most people who were interviewed, really.

And I interviewed people with dementia and carers and from both sides. That idea of being known by their primary care team did come through very strongly.

And I think for me as the interviewer and for me as a practicing gp, I also really like that side.

You know, knowing our patients, knowing that person, and being there for the kind of entire journey of a diagnosis to dementia all the way through to that progressing. It's a real privilege and I think it's something really precious for us as, as primary care teams, that continuity.

Speaker A
00:04:42.240 - 00:05:02.930
There was a bit of a gap. There wasn't. There's this kind of, oh, you know, there's potential gap in that.

And you mentioned this in the paper about the falling away support, that sometimes participants went to the memory clinic, then they were discharged, and then they felt a little bit like they, you know, they weren't picked up necessarily. I wondered if you could tell us a little bit more how that showed up in your interviews.

Speaker B
00:05:03.570 - 00:06:27.830
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I guess everybody, everyone did describe a kind of different journey.

And I don't want to just generalize, but the sentiment or the feeling I got from most people was that there was concern around a possible diagnosis, a kind of flurry of activity around when the diagnosis was made, referral to memory clinic, lots of calls.

Somebody described a mind boggling array of things being offered around that time of diagnosis and then after that things seeming to kind of fall away. So somebody described the specialist dropped them and they were seen by memory clinic, started on medication and then just left back to the gp.

So that idea of kind of there being a flurry of activity and then things gradually dropping away and that being a paradox because actually people felt that their needs generally increased as time went on. So that was very interesting really. And I've also done.

It's kind of not a published paper yet and it's still being worked up, but I've done some interviews with primary care providers as well and that seemed to kind of come through as well from them and that there is a flurry of activity around one point around diagnosis. But then as time goes on do things do seem to kind of drop off and change. So it's perhaps felt from both sides as well.

Speaker A
00:06:27.830 - 00:07:03.200
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about when sometimes it doesn't happen so much or people who knew the system.

And there was definitely an interesting rather novel finding that came out and I guess it's something we might be aware of, but I haven't seen too many papers that have highlighted it, that if there was someone in the family who knew the system, that was often perceived as crucial and it sort of implies a system rewards social capital or maybe it's just very specific to medical systems. But I wondered if you could, you know, how worried should we be about that? What can primary care do to address it or to flatten those kind of.

Those kind of flatten it out. If there is a. If it is an inequality.

Speaker B
00:07:04.000 - 00:08:54.200
Yeah, I think a great question and I also thought this was one of the most interesting themes to come out of the paper actually.

So just to kind of describe it, a lot of people described how if they had a family member or a friend who knew a little bit about the healthcare system, so if they'd worked in research or if they'd worked in social care, they would be called upon to kind of navigate this complexity of the system and it kind of came through that they would know who to contact, know how much to push, know what strings to pull to get somebody seen. And that insider knowledge, how we termed it, seemed crucial in kind of getting things done.

And, and that was described in detail by one...