Articles: patients.
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To identify, denote, and structure strategies applied by physicians and patients when communicating information about prognosis. ⋯ The study presents an empirically derived terminology so that clinicians and educators involved in medical communication can increase their awareness of prognostic communication. Based on qualitative data obtained from communication excerpts, we suggest that individual clinicians and researchers evaluate the possible benefits of more frequent use of metacommunication and explicit prognostic information.
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Background. A study was designed to compare the efficacy of anesthesia between transthecal digit block (TDB) and single injection volar subcutaneous block. ⋯ These results confirm the efficacy of the transthecal block and the single injection volar subcutaneous digit block for achieving anesthesia of the finger, but the author prefers single injection volar digit block since it causes less pain during injection and the anesthesia lasts longer. .
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Cross-sectional population-based study using administrative databases, census data, and surveys of orthopedic/neurosurgeons, family physicians (FPs) and patients in Ontario, Canada. ⋯ Prior studies have not addressed the role of patient enthusiasm for surgery. Although patients and FPs had variable enthusiasm for surgery, surgeon enthusiasm was the dominant potentially modifiable factor influencing surgical rates. Prevalence of disease and community resources were not related to surgical rates. Strategies targeting surgeon practices may reduce regional variation in care and improve access disparities.
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BMC palliative care · Mar 2011
Predictors of dying at home for patients receiving nursing services in Japan: A retrospective study comparing cancer and non-cancer deaths.
The combined effects of the patient's and the family's preferences for death at home have in determining the actual site of death has not been fully investigated. We explored this issue on patients who had been receiving end-of-life care from Visiting Nurse Stations (VNS). In Japan, it has been the government's policy to promote end-of-life care at home by expanding the use of VNS services. ⋯ Dying at home was more likely when both the patient and the family had expressed such preferences, than when the patient alone or the family alone had done so, in both cancer and non-cancer patients. Health care professionals should try to elicit the patient's and family's preferences on where they would wish to die, following which they should then take appropriate measures to achieve this outcome.