Alcohol screening and brief intervention patient acceptability
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Are the use of short alcohol screening questionnaires and delivery of alcohol brief interventions in a sexual health clinic environment acceptable to service users?
IRAS ID
168642
Contact name
Martyn Wood
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Mid-Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 1 days
Research summary
Drinking too much alcohol is a big health problem in the UK and it can lead to many different health problems. This has a big impact on the NHS and the services it provides.
Patient questionnaires have been developed which allow doctors and nurses to assess if somebody’s alcohol intake may lead on to health problems in the future. These questionnaires have been developed along with special methods for talking to people about drinking too much alcohol. They have been developed to help people to make decisions about cutting down their alcohol drinking levels. These information providing and health information methods are called “brief interventions”.
Brief interventions have been shown to be effective in decreasing alcohol intake within primary care settings (General practice). When problem alcohol consumption is identified a brief intervention can be delivered, this can either be in the form of direct health advice from a medical practitioner or targeted written literature. Delivering brief interventions in primary care can reduce the frequency of binge drinking and this has been shown to be sustained for periods of up to one year from the intervention. In sexual healthcare services, there is limited evidence available to allow us to conclude that these assessments and interventions are effective in this setting. A large randomised controlled study has been performed recently in sexual health clinics comparing brief intervention against standard written health information. The study found no significant difference in alcohol consumption behaviours between the two study groups six months after intervention.
This study aims to assess Sexual Health service user views, using a questionaire, to investigate attitudes and opinions towards alcohol screening with the aim of identifying any underlying potential reasons or themes why alcohol brief interventions have been shown to be effective in primary care environments but not in sexual health care environments.
REC name
East of England - Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EE/0139
Date of REC Opinion
26 Mar 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion