BMJ  2005;331:1083 (5 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7524.1083-b

Letter

Author rectifies omission: health behaviour change in the developing world

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—I want to acknowledge an omission in the paper I wrote on behaviour change with colleagues with expertise in communications.¹ Our first sentence places the context for the paper in the developed world, as if the far more widespread poor health and associated behaviour problems in the developing world are of less importance. The effects of poor housing, social upheaval, and other forms of deprivation manifest themselves widely in the consulting rooms of practitioners in the developing world, placing a huge burden on them to help patients as best they can.

Having made this mistake, there is not much else that needs be said about the potential of a guiding style in behaviour change consultations in developing countries. It is clearly relevant and, I believe, adaptable across cultures. In fact, given my impression of quite widespread morale problems among overburdened practitioners in the developing world, skilfulness in using . . . [Full text of this article]

Department of General Practice, Centre for Health Sciences Research, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF14 4XN rollnick@cf.ac.uk

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Consultations about changing behaviour

Stephen Rollnick, Christopher C Butler, Jim McCambridge, Paul Kinnersley, Glyn Elwyn, and Ken Resnicow
BMJ 2005 331: 961-963. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Overburdened practitioner in developing world

Jeevan P Marasinghe
bmj.com, 9 Nov 2005 [Full text]

Online poll

Find out more >>