The GP as an investigator.

Abstract

Andrew McGregor,* a 71-year-old man with a past history of hypertension and myocardial infarction, has recently been discharged from hospital after having an intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH). He wonders if he should restart aspirin, and asks for your advice. Patient-centred care and shared decision making underpinned by rigorous evidence-based medicine provide an ideal combination to answer areas of clinical equipoise such as the question asked by Mr McGregor. Research within primary care is able to help tailor treatment for patients, given the many daily consultations that GPs have with their patients, and whose multiple conditions require an integrated approach.1 Primary care research can also help to improve the application of health policy and its implementation, an increasingly bigger task that is likely to become more common in the future workload of all doctors.2 Considering the time …