16 Nov Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Associated With Educational Underachievment
Posted at 23:30h
in Author Interviews, Education, JAMA, Karolinski Institute, Mental Health Research
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_38277" align="alignleft" width="100"]
Dr. Perez-Vigil[/caption]
Ana Pérez-Vigil MD
Department of Clinical Neuroscience
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Research Center
Karolinska Institutet
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Everyone who regularly works with persons who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has seen that their patients often struggle with school work. It is not uncommon for these individuals to have poor school attendance and severe patients can be out of the education system altogether. This applies to persons of all ages, from school children to young adults who may be at university.
On the other hand there is a group of patients who, against all odds, working 10 times as hard as everybody else, manage to stay in education and eventually get a degree. So we have long suspected that OCD has a detrimental impact on the person’s education, with all the consequences that this entails (worse chances to enter the labour market and have a high paid job). But we did not really know to what extent OCD impacts education. So we wanted to know what is the actual impact of OCD on educational attainment using objectively collected information from the unique Swedish national registers. Previous work had been primarily based on small clinical samples from specialist clinics, using either self or parent report and cross-sectional designs. Previous work also tended not to control for important confounders such as psychiatric comorbidity or familial factors (genetic and environmental factors that could explain both OCD and the outcomes of interest).
14 Nov More Lab Tests Ordered At Teaching vs Non-Teaching Hospitals
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_38265" align="alignleft" width="186"]
Victoria Valencia[/caption]
Victoria Valencia, MPH
Assistant Director for Healthcare Value
Dell Medical SchoolThe University of Texas at Austin
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We were surprised to find that despite the common anecdote that resident physicians in teaching environments order more lab tests, there was a lack of empirical data to support the claim that more lab tests are ordered for patients at teaching hospitals than at non-teaching hospitals. Our study of 43,329 patients with pneumonia or cellulitis across 96 hospitals in the state of Texas found that major teaching hospitals order significantly more lab tests than non-teaching hospitals. We found this to be true no matter how we looked at the data, including when restricting to the least sick patients in our dataset. We also found that major teaching hospitals that ordered more labs for pneumonia tended to also more labs for cellulitis, indicating there is some effect from the environment of the teaching hospital that affects lab ordering overall.
13 Nov Children Can Save Lives By Learning CPR in School
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Mimi Biswas M.D., MHSc
University of California Riverside School of Medicine and
Riverside Community Hospital
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: This started as My son's science project. He wanted to make a video game to teach CPR based on a science fair website. It grew to teaching the whole 6th grade using the AHA CPR training kit alone vs adding the video game or music, staying alive, to help with compression rate. We found that a 12 year can easily learn the basic concepts of calling for help and starting hands only CPR and they can physically perform effective CPR at this age.
31 Oct Montessori Education Has Potential To Equalize Performance For Low Income School Children
[caption id="attachment_37783" align="alignleft" width="300"]
“Tempura Finger Paint Grand Rapids Montessori School” by Steven Depolo[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Angeline Lillard PhD
Professor of Psychology
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Montessori education was developed in the first half of the last century, but has been subject to little formal research. Prior research on its outcomes was problematic in using poor control groups, very small samples, demographically limited samples, a single school or classroom, or poor quality Montessori, or data from just a single time point and limited measurements.
This study addressed all these issues: it collected data 4 times over 3 years from 141 children, experimental children were in 11 classrooms at 2 high quality Montessori schools at which the control children were waitlisted and admission was done by a randomized lottery, family income ranged from $0-200K, groups were demographically equivalent at the start of the study, and many measures were taken.
12 Oct Starting School Before 8:30 AM Associated With More Anxiety and Depression in Adolescents
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jack Peltz, Ph.D. Clinical assistant professor in Psychiatry Rochester Medical Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Approximately 90% of high-school aged adolescents get either insufficient sleep during school nights or barely meet the required amount of sleep (ie, 8–10 hours) expected for healthy functioning.(1) In fact, sleep problems and insufficient sleep are so pervasive for adolescents that they could be considered an epidemic due to their adverse impact on adolescent mental and physical health.(2–5) As a result,addressing insufficient adolescent sleep represents a critical point of study and intervention. The growing body of evidence suggests that later school start times (SST), 8:30 AM or later as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatricians,6 convey multiple benefits on adolescents, including improved sleep, better mental and physical health, and improved academic outcomes.(7–10) This research, however, has focused on the direct effects of delaying school start times, or specifically how moving SST back directly predicts changes in an outcome (eg, mental health, academic achievement). This type of analysis precludes examining the important role that SST might play as a condition or context under which other sleeprelated processes take place. For instance, earlier school start times might exacerbate the impact of sleep-related processes on adolescent behavioral health outcomes. Thus, incorporating school start times as a larger contextual variable that might moderate models of sleep and adolescent functioning represents a gap in the literature and a unique opportunity to advance conceptual models. Accordingly, the current study examines the moderating role of school start times on the associations between sleep hygiene, sleep quality, and mental health.03 Oct Gay and Bisexual Men With Less Education and Income At Greater Risk of Suicide
Posted at 19:07h
in Author Interviews, Education, Gender Differences, Mental Health Research, Sexual Health, Social Issues
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Oliver Ferlatte PhD
Men's Health Research Program
University of British Columbia
Vancouver , British Columbia , Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Suicide, like many other health inequities, is unevenly distributed among the population, with marginalized groups being most affected. In Canada, suicide has been found to particularly affect gay and bisexual men, aboriginal people and people living in rural and remote communities.
While the populations affected by suicide are not mutually exclusive – for example someone can be a bisexual Aboriginal man living in a remote community – much of the suicide prevention literature tends to treat these groups as such. Moreso, very little attention is given in suicide prevention research to diversity within groups: for example, we know very little about which gay and bisexual men are most at risk of attempting suicide. This situation creates a vacuum of knowledge about suicide among gay and bisexual and deprives us of critical information for the development of effective suicide prevention activities.
We therefore investigated in a survey of Canadian gay and bisexual men (Sex Now Survey), which gay and bisexual men are at increased risk of reporting a recent suicide attempt. The large sample of gay and bisexual men with 8493 participants allows for this unique analysis focused on the multiple, intersecting identities of the survey participants.
22 Sep Joint Physical Custody Better For Children’s Psychological Health
Posted at 14:55h
in Author Interviews, Education, Karolinski Institute, Pediatrics, Psychological Science
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_37074" align="alignleft" width="125"]
Dr. Bergstrom[/caption]
Malin Bergström PhD
Center for Health Equity Studies
Karolinska Institutet
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The increase in children who move between their parent's homes after a divorce is one of the major changes in children's life circumstances during the last decade. Spending equal amounts of time in both parents' homes means that these children move fifty times a year. Child experts have claimed this to be stressful and potentially harmful to children's attachment relations to their mothers. Especially for children this young the practice of joint physical custody has been questioned.
13 Sep Healthy Behaviors and Academic Success Go ‘Hand in Hand’
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_36937" align="alignleft" width="99"]
Dr.Raspberry[/caption]
Catherine N. Rasberry, PhD
Health Scientist, Division of Adolescent and School Health
CDC Atlanta
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: For many years, researchers have documented links between health-related behaviors and educational outcomes such as letter grades, test scores, and other measures of academic achievement. However, many of those studies are becoming out-of-date or have used samples that were not nationally representative. The aim of this study was to see if previous findings held in a current, national sample of high school students.
Consistent with previous studies, our findings revealed that regardless of sex, race/ethnicity and grade-level, high school students who received mostly A’s, mostly B’s, or mostly C’s had higher levels of most protective health-related behaviors and lower levels of most health-related risk behaviors. For example, we found that:
- Students who reported receiving mostly Ds and Fs, were nine times more likely than students who received mostly As to report having ever injected any illegal drugs.
- Also, students who reported receiving mostly Ds and Fs were more than four times more likely than students who received mostly As to report that they had four or more sexual partners.
- Conversely, students who reported receiving mostly As were twice as likely as students who received mostly Ds and Fs to report eating breakfast every day in the past week.
31 Aug More Time in School Associated With Less Cardiovascular Disease
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_36724" align="alignleft" width="78"]
Dr. Vaucher[/caption]
Dr. Julien Vaucher
Physician and clinical research fellow (joint first author)
Department of Internal Medicine
Lausanne University Hospital
Lausanne, Switzerland
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Since the sixties, traditional studies have found that people who stay longer in the educational system subsequently develop less coronary heart disease. However, whether this association is causal is not clear, partly because randomised controlled trials are practically infeasible in this area. In our study, we used a genetic approach, called Mendelian randomization, that represents the next best thing to do.Based on genetic variants randomized by nature, we were able to randomize individuals according to 162 genetic markers that associate with more or less education. In other words, we used genetic markers, free from condounding factors, as proxies of education to reproduce the conditions of a trial. Then, if the genetic markers also associate together with coronary heart disease, the association between education and coronary heart disease is likely to be causal.
22 Aug Remediation Programs Linked To Reduced Attrition Among Surgical Residents
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_36598" align="alignleft" width="99"]
Dr. de Virgilio[/caption]
Christian de Virgilio, MD
LA BioMed lead researcher and corresponding author for the study
He also is the former director of the general surgery residency program
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the recipient of several teaching awards.
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Recent forecasts have predicted the United States will have a deficit of as many as 29,000 surgeons by 2030 because of the expected growth in the nation’s population and the aging of the Baby Boomers. This expected shortfall in surgeons has made the successful training of the next generation of surgeons even more important than it was before. Yet recent studies have shown that as many as one in five general surgery residents leave their training programs before completion to pursue other specialties.
Our team of researchers studied 21 training programs for general surgeons and published our findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association Surgery (JAMA Surgery) on August 16, 2017. What we found was the attrition rate among residents training in general surgery was lower than previously determined – just 8.8% instead of 20% – in the 21 programs we surveyed. Our study also found that program directors’ attitudes and support for struggling residents and resident education were significantly different when the authors compared high- and low-attrition programs.
General surgeons specialize in the most common surgical procedures, including abdominal, trauma, gastrointestinal, breast, cancer, endocrine and skin and soft tissue surgeries. General surgery residency training follows medical school and generally requires five to seven years. The programs are offered through universities, university affiliated hospitals and independent programs.
In this study, the research team surveyed 12 university-based programs, three program affiliated with a university and six independent programs. In those programs, 85 of the 966 general surgery residents failed to complete their training during the five-year period the research team studied, July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2015. Of those who failed to complete their general surgery training, 15 left during the first year of training; 34 during the second year, and 36 during the third year or later.
Notably, we found a nearly seven-fold difference between the training program with the lowest attrition rate, 2.2%, and the one with the highest rate, 14.3%, over the five-year period surveyed. In the programs with lower attrition rates, we found about one in five residents received some support or remediation to help ensure they would complete their https://medicalresearch.com/author-interviews/reduction_in_surgical_residents_work_hours/4475/ In the programs with higher attrition rates, the research team reported that only about one in 15 residents received such remediation.
22 Aug Despite Sleep Benefits To Teens, Only Half of Parents Support Later School Start Times
Posted at 18:36h
in Author Interviews, Education, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders, University of Michigan
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_36583" align="alignleft" width="180"]
Dr. Dunietz[/caption]
Galit Dunietz, Ph.D., MPH
Epidemiologist, Sleep Disorders Center
Department of Neurology
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Insufficient sleep has a negative impact on health, cognition and mood and is linked to motor vehicle accidents. However, sleep loss in adolescents has become an epidemic and arises in part from biological processes that delay sleep and wake timing at the onset of puberty. This biology does not fit well with early school start times (before 8:30 a.m.). Despite recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine to delay school start times, most schools in the U.S. have current start times before 8:30 a.m.
In this nationally representative study of US parents of teens, we examined whether parents supported or opposed later school start times (after 8:30 a.m.). We also examined what may have influenced their opinions.
We found that only about half of surveyed parents of teens with early school start times supported later school start times. Opinions appeared to depend in part on what challenges and benefits were expected to result from the change.
For example, parents who expected an improvement in their teen’s academic performance or sleep quantity tended to support the change, whereas parents that expected negative impact on afterschool activities or transportation opposed delays in school start times. We also found that parents had misconception about sleep needs of their adolescents, as the majority perceived 7-7.5 hours of sleep as sufficient, or possibly sufficient even at this young age when 8-10 hours are typically recommended.
16 Aug Neonatal Hypoglycemia Linked To Neurodevelopmental Outcomes at 4.5 Years
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_36476" align="alignleft" width="146"]
Prof. Harding[/caption]
Jane E. Harding, DPhil
Liggins Institute
The University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Neonatal hypoglycaemia – low blood sugars in newborns – affects up to one in six babies born. It involves a sustained dip in blood sugar levels following birth. Blood glucose is the only fuel for babies’ brains (adults have alternative, back-up sources). So, if left untreated, this condition can cause developmental brain damage and lowered education outcomes later in life.
In developed economies, as many as a third of babies born are at risk. Risk factors include being born smaller or larger than usual, preterm babies and babies whose mothers have any form of diabetes – this last a growing group, with the rising incidence of gestational (pregnancy-related) diabetes.
We wanted to systematically track a cohort of babies to see if hypoglycaemia in babies affects their long-term health and development. So we designed the CHYLD study – Children with Hypoglycaemia and their Later Development. We are following 614 New Zealand babies born at risk of low blood sugar levels (neonatal hypoglycemia) into childhood to see if the condition affects their later growth and development. Our team includes researchers from the Liggins Institute, the University of Auckland, Waikato Hospital, the University of Canterbury and the University of Waterloo.
Half of the babies in the study were diagnosed with, and treated for low blood sugars. Seventy percent received extra, continuous monitoring of their blood sugar levels, which detected in some babies low levels that were not diagnosed by the heel-prick tests.
15 Aug “Positive Manifold” : Vocabulary and Reasoning Skills Reinforce Each Other In Adolescents
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_36454" align="alignleft" width="165"] Dr. Kievit[/caption] Dr Rogier Kievit PhD Cambridge Neuroscience MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: One of the most robust findings in psychology is the so-called ‘positive manifold’ – The fact that people who are better at cognitive task A are,...
02 Aug Medical School Curriculum Aims To Overcome Physician Bias Against Obese Patients
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_36291" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Dr. Gayer[/caption]
Gregory Gayer, PhD
Associate Professor
Chair of Basic Science Department
TUCOM California
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: The prevalence of obesity in the United States continues to be a growing and remains a major health concern. Closely associated with obesity is an extensive list of chronic diseases, including hypertension, dyslipidemia, and type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, physician bias against obese people may create a self-defeating environment that can produce less effective communication in a manner that could reduce the patient’s willingness to participate in their own health. Our overall goal is to prepare future physicians to appropriately engage the obese patient in order to optimize health care delivery.
This study was initiated in response to the ever increasing demand on the medical profession to properly care for the obese patient. We demonstrated that medical students have the same inherent bias as other health care providers and this bias can be sustainably reduced by education. We hope that this reduction in bias shown in medical school will enable students to be better prepared to address the concerns of their obese patients and ultimately translate into better clinical outcomes for them.
28 Jul USPSTF: Behavioral Counseling to Promote a Healthful Diet and Physical Activity for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Adults Without Cardiovascular Risk Factors
Posted at 00:38h
in Author Interviews, Education, Heart Disease, JAMA, Lifestyle & Health, Primary Care, UCLA
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_36189" align="alignleft" width="133"]
Dr. Mangione[/caption]
Carol M. Mangione, MD, MSPH, FACP
Barbara A. Levey, MD, and Gerald S. Levey, MD
Endowed chair in medicine
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles
Professor of public health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Americans can experience several health benefits from consuming healthy foods and engaging in physical activity. The Task Force recommends that primary care professionals work together with their patients when making the decision to offer or refer adults who are not obese and do not have hypertension, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, or diabetes to behavior counseling to promote healthful diet and physical activity. Our focus was on the impact of a healthful diet and physical activity on cardiovascular risk because this condition is the leading cause of premature morbidity and mortality. The Task Force evaluates what the science tells us surrounding the potential benefits and harms of a particular preventive service. In this case, the Task Force found high quality evidence focusing on the impact a healthful diet and physical activity can have on a patient’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Relying on this evidence, the Task Force was able to conclude that there is a positive but small benefit of behavioral counseling to prevent cardiovascular disease.
21 Jul How To Evaluate Cognitive Function in the Aging Physician?
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_36003" align="alignleft" width="161"]
Dr. Dellinger[/caption]
E. Patchen Dellinger, M.D.
Professor, Department of Surgery
University of Washington, Box 356410
Seattle, Washington 98195-6410
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: As I passed the age of 70 myself and began considering when to slow down and/or retire I decided to examine the literature about age and physician competence. I have had a wonderful, rewarding time in surgery but have always wanted to provide the best possible care for my patients. On my review of an extensive literature on this topic I found examples of physicians who had become dangerous to their patients with age but persisted because of their eminence and also of physicians who continued to deliver high quality care well into old age.
In medicine, unlike most other safety conscious industries, we have not really taken a systematic approach to the issue of policies related to the aging physician.
05 Jul Transgender Actors Effective in Teaching Residents to Provide Respectful and Effective Health Care
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_35734" align="alignleft" width="160"]
Dr. Greene[/caption]
Richard E. Greene, MD, FACP
Medical Director, Bellevue Adult Primary Care Center
Assistant Professor, NYU School of Medicine
Associate Program Director, Primary Care Residency Program
Director, Gender and Health Education, Office of Diversity Affairs, NYU School of Medicine, OUTList
Medical Director, CHIBPS, The Center for Health, Identity, Behavior and Prevention Studies
VP of Membership and Development, GLMA-Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Transgender individuals face complex health disparities and have historically been mistreated and even denied care in medical settings. As a provider in New York City, I saw how this affected my trans patients, resulting in mistrust of the health care system, resulting in negative health outcomes. This sparked my interest in improving medical education to serve the needs of trans patients. It’s important to teach medical students and residents that they are not just treating a set of symptoms, they are working with a individuals with complex lived experiences who deserve compassionate care.
I found with traditional didactic methods, like lectures, learners smiled and nodded in agreement, but when faced with a patient who was transgender, they would stammer and feel uncomfortable with aspects of the cases that were specific to transgender patients, from pronouns to hormones.
Residents should be prepared to treat transgender patients not only with dignity, but also in medically appropriate ways. Without exposure to the transgender community, it’s difficult for providers to decipher their trans patients’ health care needs and contextualize them within a care plan.
In order to provide a low stakes environment for residents to practice these skills, we developed an OSCE focused on a transgender woman with health care needs specific to her transition. The goal of the case was to discuss the patient’s medical concerns while also taking into consideration her goals around her hormone therapy and surgical interests.
21 Jun If High School Students Are Naturally Owls, Shouldn’t School Start Later?
Posted at 19:46h
in Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Education, PLoS, Sleep Disorders
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Dorothee Fischer
Department of Environmental Health
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Center for Injury Epidemiology, Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety
Hopkinton, Massachusetts,
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Chronotypes are a result of how the circadian clock embeds itself into the 24h light-dark cycle, producing earlier and later individuals ("larks and owls") with regards to rhythms in physiology, cognition and behavior, including sleep.
It can be beneficial for health and safety to sync forced wake times (work, school) with individual chronotypes, thereby reducing the misalignment between sleep, circadian rhythms and external demands.
To better inform potential interventions such as tailored work schedules, more information is needed about the prevalence of different chronotypes and how chronotype differs by age and sex.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first large-scale and nationally representative study of chronotypes in the US.
14 Jun More Education Means Lowers Cardiovascular Risk, Regardless of Income
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_35213" align="alignleft" width="133"]
Dr. Kubota[/caption]
Yasuhiko Kubota, MD, MPH
Visiting Scholar
Division of Epidemiology and Community Health
School of Public Health
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Educational inequality is one of the most important socioeconomic factors contributing to cardiovascular disease. Since education is usually completed by young adulthood, educational inequality may affect risk of cardiovascular disease early in the life course. We thought it would be useful to calculate the lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease according to educational levels in order to increase public awareness of the importance of education.
Thus, our aim was to evaluate the association of educational attainment with cardiovascular disease risk by estimating the lifetime risks of cardiovascular disease using a US. biracial cohort. Furthermore, we also assessed how other important socioeconomic factors were related to the association of educational attainment with lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease.
27 May Babies As Young as 3-5 Months Taught To Stand
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Professor Hermundur Sigmundsson Department of Psychology Norwegian University of Science and Technology MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: There are around 23 baby-swimming instructors in Iceland who are offering baby swimming-courses. However, Snorris way to do this is unice after my knowledge. He has been doing baby swimming from 1990 - and has had around 7.000.- babies He heard about this from Norway and discovered that very young babies can stand in this way. He discovered this through practical experience. It works like this: When holding children in the water - He put his hand under the feet of the children - and lift little bit under i.e gives some pressure (tactile stimuli) the children are gradually able to stand in the feet - so stimuli and experience is important. When they are able to stand once they are able to stand again. How long time it takes for each baby to be able to stand varies a lot - as in our study - the youngest was 3.6 months old. One of the participants was standing in 15 sec in the hands of Snorri in the first week of baby swimming course. I did see babies stand first soon after Snorri started baby swimming instruction around 1990-1991. I was very surprised - and was thinking how is it possible? This is not supported by the literature. My colleagues an I thought about this as a window to study development of balance and coordination in infants. The issue about reflexes versus voluntary movement through experience was central.24 May STEM activities do not seem to encourage students to make STEM subject choices for AS/A levels
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_34843" align="alignleft" width="161"]
Dr. Banerjee[/caption]
Pallavi Amitava Banerjee, PhD, FRS
Lecturer, Graduate School of Education
St Luke's Campus
University of Exeter
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Several educational programs are being run to increase an awareness and understanding of STEM generally and more specifically to encourage young people to take up STEM learning trajectories.
A longitudinal study was conducted where nearly 60,000 year 7 students were followed up through secondary school. Every year these students took part in several hands on activities, ambassador led events, school STEM trips throughout each academic year from the beginning of year 7 till they took GCSEs.
Two main educational outcomes were considered –
a) GCSE attainment in science and math and
b) continued post-16 STEM participation (AS- and A-levels).
21 May VR/AR May Help Physicians Overcome Cognitive Biases To Admitting Errors
Posted at 16:31h
in Author Interviews, Education, Psychological Science, Technology, University of Pennsylvania
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_34746" align="alignleft" width="130"]
Dr. Han[/caption]
Jason Han, MD
Resident, Cardiothoracic Surgery
Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: The inspiration for this study comes from my personal experience as a medical student on clinical rotations. Despite having been a victim of a medical error while growing up myself, I found it extraordinarily difficult to admit to even some of my smallest errors to my patients and team. Perplexed by the psychological barriers that impeded error disclosure, I began to discuss this subject with my advisory Dean and mentor, Dr. Neha Vapiwala. We wanted to analyze the topic more robustly through an academic lens and researched cognitive biases that must be overcome in order to facilitate effective disclosure of error, and began to think about potential ways to implement these strategies into the medical school curriculum with the help of the director of the Standardized Patient program at the Perelman School of Medicine, Denise LaMarra.
We ultimately contend that any educational strategy that aims to truly address and improve error disclosure must target the cognitive roots of this paradigm. And at this point in time, simulation-based learning seems to be the most direct way to do so, but also remain hopeful that emerging technologies such as virtual and augmented reality may offer ways for students as well as staff to rehearse difficult patient encounters and improve.
01 May ADHD Less Common in Girls, But Has More Serious Consequences
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_34264" align="alignleft" width="120"]
Prof. Pell[/caption]
Professor Jill Pell MD
Director of Institute (Institute of Health and Wellbeing)
Associate (School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing)
University of Glasgow
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The novelty of our study lies in its scale and scope. In terms of scope, it reported on six educational outcomes and three health outcomes in the same group of children.
In terms of scale, it is the first study of a whole country to compare educational outcomes of children with treated ADHD with their unaffected peers and is more than 20 times larger than previous studies on similar educational outcomes. The only previous countrywide study on health outcomes, included only children with very severe ADHD who were in psychiatric hospitals.
01 May Using Virtual Reality To Teach Medical Student Empathetic Communication Skills
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Frederick W. Kron, MD President and Founder of Medical Cyberworlds, Inc Department of Family Medicine,Ann Arbor, MI and Michael D. Fetters, M.D., M.P.H., M.A. Professor of Family Medicine University of Michigan MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this technology and study? Dr. Kron: Communication is the most important component of the doctor-patient relationship. I know that through research, but also through personal experience. As a cancer survivor, I’ve seen first-hand the difference that outstanding communication skill can make to a vulnerable patient. At the beginning of the project, we asked medical educators about the challenges they had in assessing and training communication competency. They told us that technical skills are easy to teach and assess, but communication skills are mainly behavioral skills that involve verbal and nonverbal behaviors, facial expressions, and many other cues that pass between patient and provider. That’s hard to teach and assess. Activities like role play with standardized patients (SPs) have been widely used, but it’s impossible for SPs to accurately portray these behaviors, or for faculty to fully assess the nuanced behaviors of both learner and patient. Supporting this idea is a lack of evidence proving that SP encounters translate in behavioral changes or transfer into clinical settings. Developments in virtual reality provided us with a great opportunity for assessing and teaching of communication behaviors. Working with a national group of experts, we created computer-based Virtual Humans that interact with learners using the full range of behaviors you’d expect from two people talking together. They are so behaviorally realistic and compelling, that they trigger emotional responses in learners, and make learners want to learn so they can do their best. Dr. Fetters: Our team has particular interest in doctor-patient communication in the context of cancer. There are many critical aspects of cancer communication: breaking the bad news to the patient, negotiating sometimes conflicting family opinions about treatment, and communication among team members about the patient's care, just to name a few. We’ve begun building out those scenarios in the technological platform we developed, Mpathic-VR.25 Apr Simulation Exercises Reduce Anxiety of Taking Baby Home From NICU
Posted at 22:18h
in Author Interviews, Critical Care - Intensive Care - ICUs, Education, Nursing, Pediatrics
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_34172" align="alignleft" width="155"]
Dr. Raines[/caption]
Deborah A. Raines PhD, EdS, RN, ANEF
School of Nursing
University at Buffalo
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: This research grew from my experience as a neonatal nurse. I have worked with many families preparing to take their baby home and have seen the anxiety they experience wondering if they will be able to take care of their baby’s medical needs at home.
Parents are usually most anxious about emergency situations that may occur. Majority of these parents are able to state what they should do, but have never experienced the actual situation with their baby. This study was designed to see if a simulation experience would fill this gap in parents’ preparation for the discharge of their baby from the NICU. This study had parents participated in a customized simulation to have them experience the care needed by their baby at home following discharge from the NICU.
The findings revealed that parents reported a nearly 30 percent increase in confidence in their abilities to care for their baby after participating in the simulation.
24 Apr Study Compares Appendectomy Outcomes Between General Surgeons and Surgical Residents
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Haggi Mazeh, MD, FACS Endocrine and General Surgery Department of Surgery Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Mount Scopus Jerusalem, Israel 91240 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The level of operating room autonomy given to surgical residents varies greatly between different institutions and different countries. On one hand, providing residents the opportunity to operate alone augments their confidence and their sense of responsibility, possibly accelerating their learning process. On the other hand, it may be argued that the presence of a senior general surgeon in every operation is a safer approach. Before 2012, a large proportion of appendectomies at our institution were performed by surgical residents alone. After 2012, our institutional policy changed to require the presence of a senior general surgeon in every appendectomy case. This unique situation provided us the opportunity to compare the outcomes of appendectomies performed by residents alone to those performed in the presence of a senior general surgeon. Our study demonstrated no difference in the complication rates between the two groups of patients. However, surgeries performed in the presence of senior general surgeons were significantly shorter than those performed by residents.06 Apr Large Teaching Hospitals Face Greater Risk of Data Breaches
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_33589" align="alignleft" width="125"]
Dr. Ge Bai[/caption]
Ge Bai, PhD, CPA
Assistant Professor
The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
Washington, DC 20036
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We examined the hospital data breaches between 2009 and 2016 and found that larger hospitals and hospitals that have a major teaching mission have a higher risk of data breaches.
24 Mar Too Much Categorizing of Information Inhibits Creativity
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Yeun Joon Kim | Ph.D. Student Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Joseph L. Rotman School of Management University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario Canada MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Managers in organizations tend to emphasize the importance of organizing and clustering information so that other employees can (1)...
22 Mar Educational Disparities in Mortality Between Adults Aged 50–64 and 66–79 Years, U.S.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jiemin Ma PhD MHS Strategic Director, Cancer Interventions Surveillance American Cancer Society, Inc. Atlanta, GA 30303 [caption id="attachment_33223" align="alignleft" width="153"]
Dr. Jiemin Ma[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Previous studies have shown that educational disparities are smaller in the elderly than in working-aged Americans. The differences may partly be explained by the higher health insurance coverage among the elderly (near universal coverage through Medicare for adults aged 65), as well as some aging-related changes in lifestyle and social factors (e.g. retirement). Some of the previous studies were limited by the use of proxy-reported educational information, which tended to be inaccurate for the elderly.
Our study used self-reported educational attainment to estimate relative differences in educational disparities in mortality rates between adults aged 50–64 and 66–79 years in a national representative cohort from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study (NLMS).
We found that educational disparities in all-cause mortality for ages 66–79 years were about 41% and 61% lower than those for ages 50–64 years in non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks, respectively. Diminished disparities in the elderly were also found for deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer among non-Hispanic Americans.