Examines the policies and procedures that home health care agencies have developed to handle incapacitated patients and life-sustaining treatment decisions. Although most directors, staff, and patients agree that patients know their legal rights, only 67% of agencies reported having existing policies on advance directives, and only 41.5% had…

Relations between the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Psychopathology Five (PSY-5), and the Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) and its revision (NEO-PI-R) were studied for 170 community adults and 57 clinical patients. Correlations between the instruments showed meaningful relations between the two…

A survey of Florida health care professionals before (n=72) and after (n=53) mandated continuing education on domestic violence found no significant changes in awareness and identification of women involved in physically abusive relationships. Availability of patient education materials increased. Respondents desired more professional education on…

The Informed Shared Decision-Making project focused on overcoming physician resistance to continuing education and developing allies for change among stakeholders and opinion leaders. Strategies included substantive incorporation of continuing medical education into the medical education continuum and involvement of patients in planning and…

Used patient encounter records completed by 445 medical students to determine whether a family medicine clerkship offered enough experience in ear, nose, and throat (ENT) conditions. Results, which were used for curriculum development, suggest that these students were receiving sufficient opportunities for some areas of ENT practice, but not for…

Family physicians were randomly assigned either to a distance learning module (n=26) or preventive care guidelines (n=27) on smoking cessation. No differences appeared in knowledge or attitudes. The distance group had significantly greater change in self-rated competence, but the magnitude of change was not greater than that of the control group.…

Nurses, dietitians, physicians, and a pharmacist (n=33) attended a patient teaching and problem-solving course emphasizing assessment, brainstorming, collaboration, and direct instruction skills. Analysis of videotaped patient teaching exercises revealed significant improvement in all four skills. Length of teaching sessions remained the same.…

Describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a curriculum module on end-of-life care developed by medical students and implemented at Stanford University School of Medicine. The curriculum teaches students a protocol for communicating with patients when breaking bad news and discussing treatment options. (EV)

Examined relationships between patient background, treatment readiness, and therapeutic engagement in national sample of adolescents admitted to 20 treatment programs representing 3 modalities (residential, outpatient drug free, and short-term inpatient). Found that patients with higher treatment readiness at intake subsequently became more…

A study compared 48 cardiac patients who used an interactive multimedia computer-assisted patient education program and 48 taught by tutorial. The computer-assisted instructional method resulted in significantly better knowledge about exercise and self-management of chronic diseases. (Contains 29 references.) (JOW)

Research in family caregiving recently has become more challenging because of the strict protection of privacy mandated in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. We ask when should Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) follow HIPAA rules to the letter and when might they use the waiver option? What is the appropriate…

Objective: Little is known about adolescents with DSM-IV-defined inhalant abuse and dependence. The aim of this study was to compare comorbidity among (1) adolescents with inhalant use disorders, (2) adolescents who reported using inhalants without inhalant use disorder, and (3) other adolescent patients drawn from an adolescent drug and alcohol…

Purpose: The psychosocial needs of patients suffering from severe visual loss associated with advanced age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) are generally ignored in the clinical routine. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a psychosocial intervention program for ARMD patients. This intervention program was based on six modules…

Background: Endometrial adenocarcinoma is very uncommon in women under 40 years of age. Case: A 39-year-old woman with tuberous sclerosis and severe intellectual disability presented with irregular bleeding unresponsive to oral contraceptive therapy. She was subsequently found to have a deeply invasive endometrial adenocarcinoma. Conclusion:…

In the Netherlands there has been ongoing debate in the past 10 years about the availability of a hypothetical "suicide pill", with which older people could end their life in a dignified way if they so wished. Data on attitudes to the suicide pill were collected in the Netherlands from 410 physicians, 1,379 members of the general…