Presents a lecture delivered in July 1999 at a meeting on Communication in Medicine. Discusses the importance of aligning medical education with societal needs, practice patterns, and scientific developments. Stresses that clinicians must have good communication skills and be able to use those skills in the care of their patients. (Author/GCP)

Tests the effectiveness of a training booklet designed to enhance patients' communication skills in information exchange. Results indicate that trained patients engaged in more effective and efficient information seeking, provided physicians with more detailed information about their medical condition, and used more summarizing utterances to…

In response to aging patient demographics and a call for increased formal geriatric training in medical schools, a community volunteer geriatric mentor program, Bridging Generations, was developed to shape attitudes of medical students caring for the elderly. The geriatric mentor experience provided students with unique insight into the challenges…

Bipolar disorder is characterized by a chronic and fluctuating course of illness. Although nonadherence to pharmacotherapy is a frequent problem in the disorder, few studies have systematically explored psychosocial factors related to treatment discontinuation. Previous research with depressed patients receiving psychotherapy has suggested that…

Tested for five higher-order dimensions hypothesized to be common to the Interpersonal Style (ISI) and the Sixteen Personality Factor questionnaires among detoxified alcohol dependent inpatients (N=50). An oblique factor structure confirmed the factors expected, representing Self Control, Interpersonal Involvement, Emotional Stability,…

A study of 105 medical files from three Montreal hospitals suggests that long-stay patients are inactive users of many hospital services; estimated reduction in cost per day for these patients due to their earlier discharge is only about 24-30 percent of the hospital's per diem.

Kubler-Ross and Moody have made assertions about survival after death. They argued that the subjects were not dead, but in the process of dying. An alternative explanation to this "glimpse of the afterlife" approach is offered. Other theological objections are raised to the Moody/Kubler-Ross approach. (Author)

Discusses the purposes and results of eight studies relating to various patient-education issues. Articles about these studies are contained in the journal issue introduced by this editorial. (MKA)

Investigates the psychological and physical effects of training of body awareness and slow stretching on persons (N=8) with chronic toxic encephalopathy. Results show that electromyography on the frontalis muscle and state anxiety decreased, but no changes were observed in trait anxiety and in the creativity score. (Author/MKA)

Eleven patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD), 11 left hemisphere damaged (LHD) nonaphasic subjects, and 11 neurologically intact controls were given three story description tasks. The two brain-damaged groups had no language, visuospatial, memory, or conceptual deficits on standardized neuropsychological testing. In the first experiment, the…

Our aim was to understand better how people judge the acceptability of physician-assisted suicide (PAS). We found that, for people in France of all ages and for elderly people with life-threatening illnesses, acceptability is an additive combination of the number of requests for PAS, the patient's age, the amount of physical suffering, and the…

Purpose: A factor common to the results of many satisfaction surveys of elders is a lack of response variability. Increasing response variability may be useful if satisfaction surveys of elders are to be productively used in the future. In this paper, we first examine elders' preferences between five response formats and then examine the response…

This paper provides insight into the reasons underlying medical students' interest in geriatrics. Semi-structured interviews, informed by attitude theory, were conducted with first-year medical students who indicated that they were not interested in geriatric medicine ( n =10) and those who indicated that they were moderately to very interested in…

The study of neuropsychological disorders has been greatly facilitated by the localization of brain lesions on MRI scans. Current popular approaches for the assessment of MRI brain scans mostly depend on the successful segmentation of the brain into grey and white matter. These methods cannot be used effectively with large lesions because lesions…

We argue that a general control process, responsible for the activation and maintenance of task goals, is central to the concept of executive function. Failures of this process can become manifest as "goal neglect": disregard of a task requirement even though it has been understood (Duncan, 1995). We discuss the results of several published and…