Journal of general internal medicine
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Clinical Trial
Integration of Health Coaches in a Whole Health Team Model of Chronic Pain Care: a Qualitative Study.
Health coaching has shown promise in helping patients manage their chronic disease and in improving health outcomes, yet the implementation of health coaching in healthcare systems is understudied. Further, evidence suggests that interdisciplinary care teams may be more effective in treating chronic pain than usual care. As such, we sought to examine the benefits and drawbacks to embedding health coaches within interdisciplinary pain care teams ("Whole Health Teams"). ⋯ Embedding health coaches within interdisciplinary pain care teams may improve care processes and accelerate patient progress. Successful implementation would require adequate training, role clarification, and expectation setting to facilitate good communication across all care team members. Additional research is needed to evaluate the clinical outcomes of integrating health coaches on WHTs versus other implementation approaches.
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Communicating bad news such as a new cancer diagnosis to patients may have a major impact on their well-being. We investigated differences in patients' psychological distress due to the disclosure of bad news by telephone compared to in person in a systematic review and meta-analysis. ⋯ This meta-analysis found no difference regarding psychological distress regardless if bad news were disclosed by telephone or in person, but there were overall only few and heterogeneous studies with a small number of eligible patients. The findings suggest that the modality of disclosure might play a secondary role and the way in which the bad news are communicated might be more important.
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The unprecedented use of telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to examine its uptake among individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP). ⋯ While telemedicine use increased overall during the COVID-19 pandemic, its use remained much less likely among adults with LEP. Interventions targeting structural barriers are needed to address disparities in access to telemedicine. More research is needed to understand the relationship between English proficiency, telemedicine visits, and downstream ED and hospital visits.
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Social isolation is a global public health threat. Veterans are particularly at risk for social isolation due to high rates of comorbid physical and mental health problems. Yet, effective interventions are limited. ⋯ CONNECTED is a feasible and acceptable intervention and is likely to be an effective tool to intervene on social isolation among veterans.
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BACKGROUND : Hospitalist physician stress was exacerbated by the pandemic, yet there have been no large scale studies of contributing factors. ⋯ In this national study of hospital medicine, 2 variables were significantly related to burnout (workload and mental health) while two variables (feeling valued and leadership) were likely mitigators. These variables merit further investigation as means of reducing burnout in hospital medicine.