An investigation into General Practitioners’ experience with Long Covid

Farrell, Aisling; O’Flynn, James; Jennings, Aisling A.

An investigation into General Practitioners’ experience with Long Covid

dc.contributor.author	Farrell, Aisling	en
dc.contributor.author	O’Flynn, James	en
dc.contributor.author	Jennings, Aisling A.	en
dc.date.accessioned	2024-09-26T09:10:09Z
dc.date.available	2024-09-26T09:10:09Z
dc.date.issued	2024-08-20	en
dc.description.abstract	Background: Long Covid (LC) is the continuation or development of new symptoms after initial COVID-19 infection. Little is known about General Practitioners’ (GP) experience of managing patients with LC. Aims: The aim of this study is to establish GP experiences with LC. Methods: A survey was designed and piloted in three training practices prior to distribution. The survey was completed by doctors working in GP training scheme practices in Cork, Ireland. Results: Fifty-three of one hundred and sixty invited GPs completed the survey, indicating a 33% response rate. 8% (4/53) of participants agreed and 0% (0/53) strongly agreed with the statement they were “confident in diagnosing Long Covid”. 81% (43/53) were not confident in treating patients with LC. 70% (37/53) were unaware of indications for referral to secondary care. 38% (20/53) were aware of the referral pathways to local LC clinics. 93% (49/53) agreed there were educational deficits regarding LC. Conclusions: There was a lack of confidence in the diagnosis and management of LC, and in the interface with secondary care. There is demand for educational interventions to assist GPs with their care of patients with this emerging condition.	en
dc.description.status	Peer reviewed	en
dc.description.version	Published Version	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Farrell, A., O’Flynn, J. and Jennings, A. (2024) 'An investigation into General Practitioners’ experience with Long Covid', Irish Journal of Medical Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-024-03782-7	en
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-024-03782-7	en
dc.identifier.eissn	1863-4362	en
dc.identifier.issn	0021-1265	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10468/16451
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	Springer Nature Ltd.	en
dc.rights	© 2024, the Authors. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.	en
dc.rights.uri	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	en
dc.subject	Covid	en
dc.subject	General practitioner	en
dc.subject	Long Covid	en
dc.subject	Patient care	en
dc.title	An investigation into General Practitioners’ experience with Long Covid	en
dc.type	Article (peer-reviewed)	en