How doctors think

Nurses have moral obligations incurred by membership in the profession to participate knowingly in health policy advocacy. Many barriers have historically hindered nurses from realizing their potential to advance health policy. The contemporary political context sets additional challenges to policy work due to polarization and conflict. Nursing education can help nurses recognize their role in advancing health through political advocacy in a manner that is consistent with disciplinary knowledge and ethical responsibilities...

BACKGROUND: Hand hygiene (HH) is a proven low-cost means to curtail the problem of hospital-acquired infection (HAI). However, a low HH compliance rate of 17.1% was found among surgical health workers at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) in Zaria, Nigeria. METHODS: This was an intervention study conducted utilizing mixed methods to investigate the effectiveness of the World Health Organization (WHO) multimodal strategy to improve the HH compliance rate of doctors at ABUTH Zaria...

RATIONALE: Pancreas mucinous cystic neoplasm (PMCN) is uncommon, and its occurrence during pregnancy is rare. The management of PMCN during pregnancy, including diagnosis and surgical timing, is a great challenge. PATIENT CONCERNS: A nontender epigastric mass of the upper abdomen was detected by palpation in a 35-year-old woman, gravida 2, para 1, during the 36th week of gestation. She was referred to our institution for further evaluation. DIAGNOSES: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed a multilocular cystic mass in the body and tail of the pancreas (16...

STUDY QUESTION: What do fertility staff and patients think is bad news in fertility care? SUMMARY ANSWER: Staff and patients agree bad news is any news that makes patients less likely to achieve parenthood spontaneously or access and do successful treatment, but their appraisals of how bad the news is are differently influenced by specific news features and the context of its delivery. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Bad news is common in fertility care, but staff feel unprepared to share it and four in 10 patients react to it with unanticipated emotional or physical reactions...

BACKGROUND: People are exposed to variable health information from the Internet, potentially influencing their health decision-making and behaviour. It remains a challenge for people to discern between good- and poor-quality online health information (OHI). This study explored how patients evaluate and determine trust in statin-related OHI in patients with high cardiovascular risk. METHODS: This qualitative study used vignettes and think-aloud methods. We recruited patients from a primary care clinic who were at least 18 years old, had high cardiovascular risk and had previously sought OHI...

Excessive, uncontrollable, and usually unjustified worry about certain things is a sign of the mental and behavioral disease known as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Genetic research suggests that numerous genes are likely implicated in the development of GAD, even if much is yet unclear about this. As a result, if someone in a family has GAD, there is a high likelihood that someone else will also suffer from the illness, as well as another anxiety disorder. Individuals with GAD are frequently overly bothered about workaday affairs like health, assets, demise, family, accord issues, or effort challenges...

During medical consultations, physicians need to share a substantial amount of information with their patients. How this information is framed can be crucial for patient understanding and outcomes, but little is known about the details of how physicians frame information in practice. Using an inductive microanalysis approach in the study of videotaped medical interactions, we aimed to identify the information frames (i.e., higher-level ways of organizing and structuring information to reach a particular purpose) and the information-framing devices (i...

BACKGROUND: Despite the known benefits of reflection in various health care professions, it is still not a thriving practice in medical education. The literature suggests that this may be due to tensions between epistemological tenets of reflection and biomedicine. Further research is needed into experiences of doctors as they implement reflection in medical education settings. We set out to explore how these experiences were influenced by hidden curricula to provide insights into personal and contextual features of medical settings influencing engagement in reflection...

Over the past few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly improved healthcare. Once the stuff of science fiction, AI is now widely used, even in our daily lives - often without us thinking about it. All healthcare professionals - especially executives and medical doctors - need to understand the capabilities of advanced AI tools and other breakthrough innovations. This understanding will allow them to recognize opportunities and threats emerging technologies can bring to their organizations. We hope to contribute to a meaningful public discussion about the role of this new type of AI and how our approach to healthcare and medicine can best evolve with the rapid development of this technology...

Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) is an upper genital tract infection caused by a variety of aerobic and anaerobic microorganisms ascending from the cervix or vagina. Though PID is mainly a sexually transmitted disease; 15% are non-sexually transmitted.[1] In our study, we aim to assess gynecologists' understanding and awareness of PID; as it presents an important health issue affecting the Jordanian community and similar communities with the same cultural and religious backgrounds. A cross-sectional study was conducted using an online questionnaire that received responses from 172 gynecologists in Jordan...

This editorial connects each article in this issue to the theme, Challenging Long-Held Assumptions, by raising questions. How do we really determine value in health care? How do good, new ideas make it into practice? Why the untapped potential of Doctor of Nursing Practice preparation? Can we actually teach nursing students creativity? Do virtual group appointments actually work? How in the world do families care for loved ones at home on mechanical ventilation? Can nursing educators truly decolonize their own thinking? Is simulation a poor substitute for clinical placements, or just as good and sometimes better? Can the power of social media be used for good? Can simulation actually make new nurses more likely to call a code when it's needed? How can farm animals help people dealing with mental illness? And a question crucial to us all as human beings: Can forgiveness ever be bad?...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to identify final-year medical students' experiences with thought-provoking and challenging situations in general practice. DESIGN SETTING AND SUBJECTS: We conducted a qualitative analysis of 90 reflective essays written by one cohort of Norwegian final-year medical students during their internship in general practice in 2017. The students were asked to reflect upon a clinical encounter in general practice that had made a strong impression on them...

RATIONALE & OBJECTIVE: Among patients with IgA nephropathy (IgAN), proteinuria and decline in kidney function may be associated with increased economic burden. This study aimed to provide current information on the epidemiology and economic burden of IgAN in the United States. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING & STUDY POPULATION: Overall, 9,984 patients in the Optum's Market Clarity database identified by the presence of at least 2 natural language processing-derived IgAN signs and disease and symptoms terms; 813 with linked claims data included in a health care resource utilization/cost subcohort...

BACKGROUND: In the daily routine of acute care wards, where priority is given to patients with severe illnesses and those who require urgent care, working with and supporting the decision making of terminally ill patients can be challenging. METHODS: This study aimed to clarify the perceived difficulties of and learning needs among acute care ward nurses providing end-of-life care during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to perform analyses by years of clinical experience, we conducted semi-structured interviews with both novice and experienced nurses...

For physiotherapists and other healthcare professionals, developing capability and expertise in research can be challenging. However, involvement in research is beneficial at organisational and individual levels, both for clinicians and patients. One way to embark on research is to apply for a personal fellowship such as the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Pre-Doctoral Clinical Academic Fellowship (PCAF). While the NIHR has guidance on how to complete the application form, it can be difficult to implement this guidance and understand what a competitive application looks like...

BACKGROUND: As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in New South Wales, Australia, launched the rpavirtual program, the first full-scale virtual hospital in Australia, to remotely monitor and follow-up stable COVID-19 patients. As part of the intervention, a pulse oximeter wearable device was delivered to patients to monitor their oxygen saturation levels, a critical indicator of COVID-19 patient deterioration. Understanding users' perceptions towards the device is fundamental to assessing its usability and acceptability and contributing to the effectiveness of the intervention, but no research to date has explored the user experience of the pulse oximeter for remote monitoring in this setting...

This paper offers a novel, qualitative approach to evaluating the outcomes of integrating humanities and ethics into a newly revised pre-clerkship medical education curriculum. The authors set out to evaluate medical students' perceptions, learning outcomes, and growth in identity development. Led by a team of interdisciplinary scholars, this qualitative project examines multiple sources of student experience and perception data, including student essays, end-of-year surveys, and semi-structured interviews with students...

BACKGROUND: Co-produced research holds enormous value within the health sciences. Yet, there can be a heavy focus on what research participants think, do and know; while the researcher's responsibility to explore and re/work their own knowledge or praxis tends to escape from view. This is reflected in the limited use of co-production to explore broad structural distributions of health and risk(s). We argue this missed opportunity has the potential to unfold as what Berlant calls a 'cruel optimism', where something desirable becomes an obstacle to flourishing and/or produces harm...

Very little is known about the impact of living with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). NMIBC patients' experiences of their illness-in terms of their perceptions, coping strategies and psychological wellbeing-were explored. This study describes an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of individuals' accounts of living with NMIBC while on routine surveillance for cancer recurrence. Ten individuals took part in face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Three superordinate themes were derived from the data...

INTRODUCTION: There is increasing interest in the use of experiential knowledge and the development of experiential expertise in mental health. Yet, little is known about how best to use this expertise in the role of a psychiatrist. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to gain insight into the concerns of psychiatrists using their lived experiences with mental health distress as a source of knowledge for patients, colleagues and themselves. MATERIALS AND METHOD: Eighteen psychiatrists with lived experience as patients in mental health care were interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaire...