Ridsdale 1997.

Methods	Randomised controlled trial (approximately 6 months follow‐up)
Participants	251 adults with epilepsy recruited from 6 general practices in the South Thames region of England Mean age of participants was 51 years; 54% were male
Interventions	Intervention: special epilepsy nurse in primary care Control: usual care
Outcomes	Questionnaire responses at first appointment (baseline) and approximately three months after the second appointment (which was offered three months after initial appointment) measuring: Impact on patient knowledge Satisfaction with advice Psychological well‐being Recording of 'key variables' extracted from the clinical records before and after the intervention
Funding	Study funded by the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust and the National Society for Epilepsy
Notes	Excluded people with a diagnosis of learning or language disability
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	No details of randomisation provided
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Details of allocation concealment were not reported
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	None of the participants, clinicians or assessors appeared to have been blinded. For some outcomes (from questionnaires), this may have introduced bias
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Clinical data were extracted from the notes of 92% subjects
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	Outcomes were defined broadly as "Questionnaire responses and recording of key variables extracted from the clinical records before and after the intervention". It is unclear if findings were selectively reported
Other bias	High risk	Power calculations and the required sample size were not reported. There was no obvious possibility of contamination. Trialists told participants in the intervention group that they would attend a 'neurology clinic', which may have been interpreted as specialist care. Potentially this belief may have improved patient outcomes over and above the effects of the intervention from the epilepsy nurse specialist
Overall risk of bias	Unclear risk	A lack of clarity about randomisation and blinding and moderate levels of dropout