Clinical scores in primary care

Dambha-Miller, Hajira, Little, Paul and Everitt, Hazel (2020) Clinical scores in primary care. British Journal of General Practice, 70 (693), 162-163, [163]. (doi:10.3399/bjgp20X708941).

Record type: Editorial

Abstract

Clinical scoring systems are algorithms designed to predict outcomes, aid decision making, support treatment options, manage clinical risk or improve efficiency. The term clinical scoring system is known interchangeably as clinical decision rule, prediction algorithm, clinical prediction tool, risk score or scoring tool.[1] Medicine is not short of these with recent searches estimating that over 250 000 are available to use.[2] Despite the proliferation of algorithms to inform clinical care, this has not been matched with evidence of their utility. The uncertainty amongst clinicians about their efficiency and accuracy, alongside growing primary care workloads in the limited ten-minute consultation, may contribute to low utility. As demonstrated in the linked paper, there is the additional complication of multiple scores being available for the same condition. So how do we decide on whether to use a clinical score and what makes one better than another?

Text

editorial sore throat_HDM_PL2 HE2 - Accepted Manuscript

Available under License University of Southampton Accepted Manuscript Licence.

Download (46kB)