What are the COVID & Respiratory Questions you want answers to?
IPCRG has set up a service for global primary care clinicians. This service leverages the new IPCRG Sentinel Network by capturing questions arising from members’ current clinical practice, prioritising these, and providing straightforward evidence-based answers.
In the first stages of creating this service our focus has been on answering questions about COVID-19. However, questions on other respiratory conditions are now included and, in the future, we believe that the Sentinel Network will be well placed to identify emerging and urgent challenges.
We have had a great response from the Sentinel Network and are working through 24 questions received to date, prioritising the most time-critical responses. These range from the treatment of asthma and COPD during a pandemic to questions around specific COVID-19 treatments. Look out for our answers: ‘Managing post COVID-19 symptoms’ and ‘The duration of immunity after COVID-19 infection and inoculation’ available here.
The project is a fantastic opportunity to engage with the global primary network and bring the best evidence to them in answer to the challenging questions they face in day-to-day practice
Each answer is generated by our librarian, working together with a clinical lead. Existing resources provided by other organisations, such as the COVID-END inventory of best evidence syntheses and McMaster Plus COVID-19 Evidence Alerts, are used to identify evidence which is then analysed for suitability and robustness, as well as searching peer-reviewed published evidence as necessary for specific questions.
Our primary care clinical- and research-experienced Answer Review Group then interprets the evidence and suggests “What this means for your clinical practice”. This group includes 14 colleagues who meet regularly to review the answers. The group has been instrumental in developing how the service works so that we can respond in a timely and reliable way to our network.
Being involved in this project has provided stimulating and enriching academic exchange sessions.
So far, we have learned a lot from the in-depth and engaging discussions from colleagues working in diverse situations globally. We are confident that we are finding answers suitable for all busy primary care clinicians that give the right level of detail, whilst being well-presented, evidenced and consumable. You can view the first answers on the IPCRG website.