Psychology, health & medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Trait predictors of placebo responses in itch.
This study investigated trait predictors of placebo responses in the context of inflammatory skin reactions. This was a randomized, cross-over, experimental study using a deceptive placebo protocol. A healthy sample of volunteers (N = 48) completed online personality measures, then attended two laboratory sessions in which short-term inflammatory skin reactions were induced. ⋯ This is the first study to identify trait predictors of placebo responses in inflammatory skin reactions. Ego resiliency may typify greater placebo responsiveness; however, this may only be in certain contexts. Matching treatment approaches to bio-behavioural response tendencies may be useful clinically if the placebo component of traditional treatments can be enhanced.
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Depression and anxiety symptoms in chronic pain are associated with adverse clinical outcomes, and appear highly related to patient's illness perceptions as well as with marital adjustment. This study aimed to investigate the predictive value of pain variables, marital adjustment and illness perceptions on depression and anxiety in patients with chronic pain. Two hundred patients were recruited from a pain unit in a public hospital in the north of Portugal. ⋯ Perceptions of greater symptomatology (identity) and of emotional impact, and lesser perceptions of treatment control and understanding of chronic pain (illness comprehensibility) were significantly associated with increased depression symptoms. Perceptions of greater symptomatology (identity), emotional impact and greater concern were associated with anxiety symptoms. These findings indicate that the contribution of illness perceptions was greater than that made by traditional covariates, and may therefore be a useful basis for future psychological interventions.
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Burnout syndrome (BOS) is the result of chronic stress at work, and is characterized by emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and low professional accomplishment. Anesthesiologyis a stressful profession. ⋯ Of the 198 anesthesiologists included in this study, 48.7% were positive for burnout, 26.9% for EE, 41.3% for DP and 32.7% for low personal accomplishment. Trends in BOS was associated with a younger age, difficulty to conciliate family and work demands, low self-esteem, and depressive symptoms.
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Physician shortage and turnover are major problems worldwide. On-call duties may be among the risk factors of high turnover rates among physicians. We investigated whether having on-call duties is associated with physicians' turnover intention and whether job strain variables moderate this association. ⋯ Also, job demands moderated the association between being on-call and turnover intention; turnover intention levels were higher among those with on-call duties and high demands than those being on-call and low demands. To conclude, working on-call was related to physicians' turnover intention particularly in those with high job strain. Health care organizations should focus more attention on working arrangements and scheduling of on-call work, provide a suitable working pace and implement means to increase physicians' participation and control over their job.
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Good practice guidelines recommend that women who undergo mastectomy are offered reconstructive surgery. However, many who choose this option report a degree of decisional regret and dissatisfaction because their pre-surgical expectations were not met. This paper reports an acceptability study of a new intervention (PEGASUS) that aims to support shared decision-making by eliciting women's pre-surgical expectations and setting patient-centred goals. ⋯ Staff reported that PEGASUS facilitated patient-centred discussions and informed the decisions made about potential surgery. This preliminary study suggests that this novel intervention is acceptable to patients and health professionals alike. Further work is needed to evaluate its efficacy and then its effectiveness with a larger sample of women, and its potential use with other patient groups.