Counselling in a general practice surgery: results of a study

Abstract

In ‘Counselling in General Practice: a Review’, Wyld (1981) concluded (p, 136) that some 75 per cent of clients can be expected to show some improvement after being counselled by non-medical workers in a GP setting, and that both GP contact and drug prescriptions are likely to be reduced. Wyld also quotes on the same page from what he calls the most informative paper about counsellors in GP practices, that by Anderson and Hasler (1979), which was a report on the service provided by a part-time counsellor in a GPs practice in Oxford. In this study which was initially of 80 patients, 35 out of 54 who responded to a questionnaire reported ‘general improvement’, and 35 out of 54 said they had reduced their demand for medical treatment. When the cost of prescriptions in the three months before counselling was compared with that for the three months after counselling, there was an estimated saving of £76.92 in the second three months. However, it is clear, as is common with questionnaire studies, that not all those seen responded to the questionnaire. It may also be difficult for patients who have had counselling, and who trouble to respond, to be other than supportive, particularly in view of the time they will have given up. Among the other studies mentioned by Wyld is one by Meacher (1977) in which, as well as patients estimating the help they had received, GPs also gave their estimates. Seventy five per cent of the patients said that counselling had helped and 82 per cent of the patients were said by the GPs to have improved after counselling.