Practice nurses and obesity: professional and practice-based factors affecting role adequacy and role legitimacy.

Aim: This qualitative study explored the professional and practice-based factors affecting the role legitimacy and adequacy of practice nurses in managing obese patients.

Background: There are strong clinical, financial and practical reasons for tackling obesity in UK general practice. Although practice nurses may seem to be in an ideal position to manage obesity, there remain questions about their role adequacy (sense of self-efficacy in responding to patients' problems) and role legitimacy (their perceived boundaries of professional responsibility and right to intervene).

Increasing practice nurse access to alcohol training.

Policy makers have repeatedly placed emphasis on the role of primary care in screening for at-risk alcohol consumption and delivering public health messages to the general population. Research has pointed to primary care staff holding negative attitudes towards alcohol misusing patients. Training has traditionally been seen as the key to increasing the capacity of the medical field to engage with alcohol misusing patients but little work has been undertaken to examine the potential barriers to training take up.

Women's alcohol consumption: emerging patterns, problems and public health implications.

There is growing awareness of changes in the levels and patterns of women's use of alcohol. Australian and international data suggest that patterns of consumption among younger women are beginning to echo that of their male counterparts. Similarly, alcohol consumption among older women is also increasing in some developed countries.