Tellingly, though, after it invites respondents to offer comments "on any aspect of NHS care", the consultation leaflet provides only enough space for a line or two of handwriting.
A consultation leaflet published by the culture department today called Your BBC, Your Say asks members of the public whether they think the licence fee is the best way of paying for the BBC and, if not, for suggestions of alternative ways of funding the corporation - a potentially explosive question.
Then, when they needed more space for their operations, they ejected the 2,000 residents of what is now the site of the British Library, greatly exacerbating the overcrowding in the surrounding slums, without so much as a multicoloured consultation leaflet in sight.
The interventions that were tailored to address these barriers included support for change processes in the practices, increasing the fee for telephone consultations, patient information leaflets and computer-based decision support and reminders.
Yet again, one study showed a significant increase in consultation rates in the leaflet group.
Therefore, GPs are encouraged to actively use patient information leaflets during consultations for common infections.
Five studies investigated effects of leaflets during consultations for respiratory tract infections; one concerned conjunctivitis, one urinary tract infections and one gastroenteritis and tonsillitis.
In our opinion, the active use of a leaflet during consultation and the fact that it relates to an acute problem increases the chance that patients will actually read the leaflet and consider it relevant.
Suggestions for improvement include re-thinking the scenarios for the communication skills videos to better reflect real-life consultations, providing patient information leaflets or posters, and more clearly explaining the purpose of the reflective exercises and the case studies that participants are asked to add online.
They were also asked to rate any tool that the cardiologist used during the consultation, such as video, drawings, leaflets, 3D model and medical images (ie, echocardiography, CMR and X-rays).
