Specialist LINK and primary care network clinical pathways - a new approach to patient referral: a cross-sectional survey of awareness, utilization and usability among family physicians in Calgary

Background Specialist LINK is a real-time, non-urgent telephone collaboration line designed to link family doctors and specialists. The purpose was to reduce wait times, improve efficiency and enhance the coordination of patient care through enhanced communication between primary and specialty care. The aim of this study was to determine the awareness and utilization of Specialist LINK and Primary Care Network (PCN) Clinical Pathways among family physicians. Methods A family physician experience cross-sectional survey was conducted from March to May 2018 in Calgary and Area. The survey was designed to assess family physicians’ awareness and utilization of Specialist LINK and PCN Clinical Pathways. We also used a 1–10 scale for respondents to rate the utility of Specialist LINK (1 was least useful and 10 represented highly useful). To obtain a true representative sample, family physicians were selected through a random sampling method. We applied multiple approaches to ensure a high response rate: paper survey, telephone reminders, and an on-site survey for non-responders. Results A total of 251 participants completed the survey of the 650 randomly selected family physicians (Response rate≈39%). Eighty-nine percent of the family physicians were aware of Specialist LINK [95% Confidence Interval (84–92%)]. The average rating was 8.1 (on a scale of 1–10) for the usefulness of Specialist LINK. We found that the odds of being aware of Specialist LINK were two times higher in female family physicians compared to male physicians. Also, those with less than 5 years of experience, the odds of being aware of Specialist LINK were around five times higher compared to those with 5 or more years of experience. Fifty-five percent of family physicians were aware of PCN Clinical Pathways (95% CI = 48–60%); of those, 82% were accessing and following PCN Clinical Pathways in their clinical practice. The average rating was 7.9 (on a scale of 1–10) for the usefulness of PCN Clinical Pathways. Conclusion Most of the respondents in Calgary and area were aware of Specialist LINK and a large proportion of them were using it to access advice for their patients.Other Information Published in: BMC Family Practice License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0See article on publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-020-01159-0</p

MOESM1 of Lignocellulose binding of a Cel5A-RtCBM11 chimera with enhanced β-glucanase activity monitored by electron paramagnetic resonance

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Smoothed far ultraviolet circular dichroism spectra of the BsCel5A-CBM3 (black line) and BsCel5A-CBM11 (red line). The insert presents the percentage of secondary structure elements in both proteins as estimated by deconvolution using the ContinII software [33]. See the relevant section in “Materials and Methods” for further experimental details

Additional file 2: of Insertion of a xylanase in xylose binding protein results in a xylose-stimulated xylanase

Table S1. Oligonucleotides used for the construction of the linker libraries at XBP positions 209 and 262

Additional file 1: of Insertion of a xylanase in xylose binding protein results in a xylose-stimulated xylanase

Screening of the effect of xylose on the xylanase activity of the 225 XynA+clones. The xylanase activity in culture supernatants of each clone was measured in the presence and absence of xylose, and the activity ratio in the presence (+ xylose) as compared to the absence (−xylose) was calculated. A ratio (+xylose/−xylose) of 1.0 indicates no difference in the activity in the presence of xylose. Of the 225 clones, 69% (155 clones) showed lower activity in the presence of xylose and 4% (10 clones) showed an increased activity greater than 10% in the presence of xylose. See “Methods” section for further experimental details