Involving deprived communities in improving the quality of primary care services: does participatory action research work?

Background: Participation by communities in improving the quality of health services has become a feature of government policy in the United Kingdom. The aim of the study was to involve a deprived community in the UK in shaping quality improvements of local primary care services. The specific objectives were firstly to create participation by local people in evaluating the primary care services available in the area and secondly to bring about change as a result of this process.

Quality in general practice consultations; a qualitative study of the views of patients living in an area of high socio-economic deprivation in Scotland.

Background: Inequality in health and health care services is an important policy issue internationally as well as in the UK, and is closely linked to socio-economic deprivation, which in Scotland is concentrated in and around Glasgow. Patients views on primary care in deprived areas are not well documented. In the present study we explore the views of patients living in a high deprivation area on the quality of consultations in general practice.

Clients or citizens? Some considerations for primary care organisations.

Health services policy in the United Kingdom has given prominence to patient and public participation within a 'modernization' agenda. The superficial consensus in support of lay participation masks a conflicting array of ideologies and theoretical perspectives that colour how this is interpreted. Both client-oriented perspectives and citizenship-oriented approaches are limited by the dynamics of power relationships and decision-making processes within National Health Service structures.