Self-Care Practices for Common Colds by Primary Care Patients: Study Protocol of a European Multicenter Survey-The COCO Study

Weltermann, Birgitta M; Biljana Gerasimovska-Kitanovska; Thielmann, Anika; Chambe, Juliette; Lingner, Heidrun; Pirrotta, Enzo; Buczkowski, Krzysztof; Tekiner, Selda; Czachowski, Slawomir; Edirne, Tamer; Zielinski, Andrzej; Yikilkan, Hülya; Koskela, Tuomas; Petrazzuoli, Ferdinando; Hoffman, Robert D; Petek Šter, Marija; Guede Fernández, Clara; Uludağ, Ayşegül; Hoffmann, Kathryn; Mevsim, Vildan

doi:10.1155/2015/272189

Self-Care Practices for Common Colds by Primary Care Patients: Study Protocol of a European Multicenter Survey-The COCO Study

Journal

Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Date Issued

2015

Author(s)

Weltermann, Birgitta M

Thielmann, Anika

Chambe, Juliette

Lingner, Heidrun

Pirrotta, Enzo

Buczkowski, Krzysztof

Tekiner, Selda

Czachowski, Slawomir

Edirne, Tamer

Zielinski, Andrzej

Yikilkan, Hülya

Koskela, Tuomas

Petrazzuoli, Ferdinando

Hoffman, Robert D

Petek Šter, Marija

Guede Fernández, Clara

Uludağ, Ayşegül

Hoffmann, Kathryn

Mevsim, Vildan

Kreitmayer Pestic, Sanda

DOI

10.1155/2015/272189

Abstract

Background. Self-care for common colds is frequent, yet little is known about the spectrum, regional differences, and potential risks of self-care practices in patients from various European regions. Methods/Design. We describe the study protocol for a cross-sectional survey in 27 primary care centers from 14 European countries. At all sites, 120 consecutive adult patients, who visit their general practitioner for any reason, filled in a self-administered 27-item questionnaire. This addresses patients' self-care practices for common colds. Separately, the subjective level of discomfort when having a common cold, knowing about the diseases' self-limited nature, and medical and sociodemographic data are requested. Additionally, physicians are surveyed on their use of and recommendations for self-care practices. We are interested in investigating which self-care practices for common colds are used, whether the number of self-care practices used is influenced by knowledge about the self-limited nature of the disease, and the subjective level of discomfort when having a cold and to identify potential adverse interactions with chronic physician-prescribed medications. Further factors that will be considered are, for example, demographic characteristics, chronic conditions, and sources of information for self-care practices. All descriptive and analytical statistics will be performed on the pooled dataset and stratified by country and site. Discussion. To our knowledge, COCO is the first European survey on the use of self-care practices for common colds. The study will provide new insight into patients' and general practitioners' self-care measures for common colds across Europe.