ABSTRACT
Many patients currently taking psychoactive drugs or being referred to psychiatrists for the outpatient treatment of general psychological distress could be offered effective management in a general practice setting, with or without inclusion of pharmaceutical supports. This article offers practical guidelines for practitioners in counselling emotionally distressed patients in a general practice setting.
Subject(s)
Family Practice , Stress, Physiological/therapy , Cognitive Behavioral Therapy/methods , Family Practice/trends , HumansABSTRACT
A system is described by means of which the ambulant subject may be video-filmed over several hours with the electroencephalograph superimposed on the same tape, allowing correlations to be observed in the active state. Our first subjects have been girls with Rett syndrome. Requirements are: one portable video camera/recorder, a conventional e.e.g. machine, the 'Medilog 9000' system for prolonged ambulatory recording (Oxford Medical), a specialized video mixer (videogram ForA FVG600, commercially available) a video timer, a conventional video cassette recorder and a television monitor. The cost is small for a department already equipped to carry out ordinary ambulatory e.e.g. monitoring. The method is safe, well tolerated, simple to use and adaptable. To the best of the authors' knowledge, they are the first to use this system and they believe that it should find wider application when it is desirable to correlate the behaviour of a subject with physiological parameters, on a restricted budget.
Subject(s)
Electroencephalography/instrumentation , Epilepsies, Partial/physiopathology , Epilepsy, Absence/physiopathology , Intellectual Disability/physiopathology , Video Recording/instrumentation , Ambulatory Care , Brain/physiopathology , Child , Female , Humans , Monitoring, Physiologic/instrumentation , Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted , SyndromeABSTRACT
The main operational and financial aspects of the maintenance service provided by the West of Scotland Health Boards' Department of Clinical Physics and Bio-Engineering (DCPB) to the clinical chemistry laboratories in the region are described. The scheme, in operation since March 1976, covers all breakdown servicing and engineering preventive maintenance for Technicon Auto-Analyzer equipment valued at pounds 1 1/4 million in terms of direct replacement costs. The engineering team works closely with the laboratory staffs to ensure that the performance of the equipment is maintained to specification. The direct economies for the Health Boards through savings in maintenance contract charges total around pounds 60,000 per year. In addition, considerable sums have been saved by servicing, modifying, and constructing other instruments for the laboratories outwith the immediate remit of Technicon maintenance. Other economic and operational benefits which result from the scheme are commercially disinterested advice on equipment obsolescence and replacement, and redistribution between the laboratories of old but useful equipment to meet specific needs of the service in the region.
