Acceptability and efficacy of a novel approach to alcohol brief interventions in primary care: The REACH Project

Alcohol is a major source of harm in the community. Primary care (including family doctor and general practice settings) can play a role in reducing harmful alcohol use. Research shows that when clinicians talk to their patients about alcohol use patients can reduce their weekly alcohol consumption. In the REACH project we worked with general practitioners (GPs), nurses and patients to design a new approach to delivering alcohol brief interventions, including new tools and resources to support GPs and nurses to ask more patients about their alcohol use. Feedback from GPs and nurses indicated that the resources were useful. We found some difficulties with embedding the resources into practice, mostly influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic. Primary Health Networks have an opportunity to facilitate practices to engage with patients about their alcohol use by providing high quality resources in the languages spoken by patients, work with practices to know more about the patient data they capture, and work with the whole practice, including doctors, nurses, and administrative staff to raise awareness of the resources available to them.