Group items tagged

"But should all social determinants be treated with equal concern? In other words, are certain determinants more important than others in influencing the health of populations?"

This study underscores the need for greater emphasis on the social determinants of health in medical education in the context of homelessness. These insights may help to inform the development and design of service-learning initiatives that integrate understandings of the social determinants of health, and thus potentially improve the readiness of clinicians to address the complex factors that shape the health of homeless populations.

"Exploratory behaviors during learning determine what is studied and when, helping to optimize subsequent memory performance. To elucidate the cognitive and neural determinants of exploratory behaviors, we manipulated the control that human subjects had over the position of a moving window through which they studied objects and their locations. Our behavioral, neuropsychological and neuroimaging data indicate that volitional control benefits memory performance and is linked to a brain network that is centered on the hippocampus."

"WHAT TO DO WHEN A PATIENT LACKS CAPACITY - The degree and urgency with which to act on findings of impaired capacity depends on multiple factors, including the expected duration of impairment, the severity of the impairment, and the seriousness of the decision. Unless the urgency of a patient's medical condition requires that a substituted decision be made immediately, efforts should be made to identify and correct any reversible causes of the impairment [26]. This is particularly relevant in hospitalized patients with impaired capacity due to delirium. Treatment of the underlying causes of delirium may restore decision-making capacity. Patients with mild to moderate cognitive impairment that is not expected to fluctuate may benefit from more intensive efforts at education to improve understanding of the relevant facts, followed by reassessment of decision-making abilities. A randomized trial found that a memory and organizational aid given to patients with mild stage Alzheimer disease dementia (n = 80) improved performance on understanding, which in turn increased the likelihood of being judged capable of providing informed consent to enroll in a clinical trial [34]. This enhancement was also effective in a randomized trial with middle-aged and older adults with schizophrenia [35]. For patients whose impairments are severe enough that they are judged to lack the capacity to make a decision, there is a clear ethical obligation to seek out a substitute decision maker. Substitute or surrogate decision makers should ideally have been chosen by the patient in advance. In the absence of a designated surrogate, laws may vary in terms of which people can serve in this proxy role and their hierarchy; in general, the order is the spouse, adult children, parents, siblings, and other relatives. (See "Legal aspects in palliative and end of life care", section on 'Surrogate decision makers'.) When making a substituted decision, the proxy should take into consideration

"STATworkUP™ has an immense amount of correlated data between symptoms, tests, diagnoses and treatments. While the app cannot be relied upon to thoroughly determine a differential diagnosis or provide an evidence-based summary of therapy, it can serve as an additional arrow in the clinicians quiver especially when wrestling with an uncommon diagnostic dilemma."

A social contract does exist between medicine and society. Because society has chosen to use the concept of the profession as a means of organizing the services of the healer, professionalism has come to serve as the basis of this social contract. What is expected of the physician as healer is largely determined by what it means to be a professional in contemporary society.

"In early April 2012, a flurry of news reports described a study of major health risks shortening the lives of people in the Canadian province of Ontario. A typical report described "bad lifestyle choices" as together taking as much as seven years off Ontarians' life expectancies."

"It's that time of year again. The references are in, the applications are complete, interviews have been accepted, flights are booked and medical students across Canada are preparing themselves for the rigamarole known as CaRMS that will determine where they will be living for the next 2-5 years and what kind of medicine they will be practicing for the rest of their lives."

"A curriculum consisting of high-yield ultrasound concepts was developed and posted to Twitter @EDUltrasound daily. Followers received tweets "pushed" directly to their mobile devices. Following the year-long program, followers were surveyed regarding the program's effectiveness. To determine the ways in which tweets were reaching users, followers were categorized demographically."

"The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of mental workload as a key determinant of the type of cognitive processing used by clinicians. Published research appears to be consistent with 'schemata' based cognition as the principle mode of working for those engaged in complex tasks under time pressure. Although conscious processing of factual data is also used, it may be the primary mode of cognition only in situations where time pressure is not a factor. "

"Multimedia design principles are easy to implement and result in improved short-term retention among medical students, but empirical research is still needed to determine how these principles affect transfer of learning. Further research on applying the principles of multimedia design to medical education is needed to verify the impact it has on the long-term learning of medical students, as well as its impact on other forms of multimedia instructional programmes used in the education of medical students."

"Achieving health equity requires reaching beyond the clinic and into communities. In this short video, the AAMC's Diversity Policy and Programs division shines a spotlight on the social determinants of health and how they shape an individual's opportunity for quality health and healthcare. The goal is to inspire changes that lead to the elimination of health disparities."

"The I-PASS Study aims to determine the effectiveness of implementing a "resident handoff bundle" to standardize inpatient transitions in care and decrease medical errors in 10 pediatric institutions."

"Income is a significant factor in determining why people are hospitalized in Toronto, where the richest and poorest patients are being admitted for very different reasons, a pioneering new study has found. "

"But most of the time we are free to choose. Then, the key determinants of when you would use each type of map will usually be these: "

"In conclusion, this issue of the journal examines the handoff process across multiple domains, learners and contexts and creates a foundation for further inquiry. Future research should focus on determining best practices for handoff education for all learner levels, demonstrating validity of assessment methods, understanding the patient perspective and objectively measuring patient safety outcomes."

"In this report, the determinants and characteristics of the major CDRs and ADRs are reviewed, as are a variety of de-biasing strategies that may mitigate their influence."

"We found incorporating OSTEs into a FCR faculty development program to be an effective strategy for improving faculty teaching behavior. Additional study is needed to determine if this strategy results in sustained improvements in conducting FCRs in real inpatient settings. "

Among the key determinants of learning a spinal anaesthetic technique are the acquisition of knowledge and recognition of certain characteristic "sensations" as the procedure is performed. A haptic device with mathematical algorithms is a way of replicating these "sensations", the physical make-up of each individual layer of tissue in a human back.