Articles: health.
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Review Comparative Study
Content comparison of self-reported disability measures for the elderly according to the international classification of functioning, disability and health.
To identify self-reported disability measures developed for older adults by performing a systematic literature review and to compare the contents of all identified measures based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). ⋯ The ICF can be used as a conceptual framework not only for assessing measures but also for developing new measures. According to this ICF-based content comparison, the contents of currently available measures for disability in older adults vary significantly from one another. Our study may provide useful information for the selection of suitable measures for a particular purpose, as well as the development of new measures.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Evaluating a health care provider delivered intervention to reduce intimate partner violence and mitigate associated health risks: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial in Mexico City.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization is a prevalent issue among women residing in Mexico City. Comprehensive and integrated health care provider (HCP) delivered programs in clinic-settings are needed, yet few have been evaluated in Latin America, including Mexico. In addition, there has been minimal attention to interventions among lower income women presenting at settings outside of antenatal care clinics. The current randomized controlled trial seeks to increase midlevel HCPs' capacity, specifically nurses, who are often the first point of contact in this setting, to identify women presenting at health clinics with experiences of IPV and to assist these women with health risk mitigation. Specific outcomes include changes in past-year IPV (physical and/or sexual), reproductive coercion, safety planning, use of community resources, and quality of life. ⋯ This study will provide important insight into whether a nurse-delivered program can assist women currently experiencing abuse in a Latin American context. Findings can be used to inform IPV programs and policies in Mexico City's public health clinics.
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Technological advances coupled with decreasing costs are bringing whole genome and whole exome sequencing closer to routine clinical use. One of the hurdles to clinical implementation is the high number of variants of unknown significance. For cancer-susceptibility genes, the difficulty in interpreting the clinical relevance of the genomic variants is compounded by the fact that most of what is known about these variants comes from the study of highly selected populations, such as cancer patients or individuals with a family history of cancer. ⋯ Allele frequencies vary between ancestral groups, and there are 21 variants for which the minor allele in one population is the major allele in another. Detailed analysis of a selected subset of 5 clinically important cancer genes, BRCA1, BRCA2, KRAS, TP53, and PTEN, highlights differences between germline variants and reported somatic mutations. The dataset can serve a resource of genetic variation in cancer-susceptibility genes in 6 ancestry groups, an important foundation for the interpretation of cancer risk from personal genome sequences.
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It has been suggested that children with same-sex attracted parents score well in psychosocial aspects of their health, however questions remain about the impact of stigma on these children. Research to date has focused on lesbian parents and has been limited by small sample sizes. This study aims to describe the physical, mental and social wellbeing of Australian children with same-sex attracted parents, and the impact that stigma has on them. ⋯ Australian children with same-sex attracted parents score higher than population samples on a number of parent-reported measures of child health. Perceived stigma is negatively associated with mental health. Through improved awareness of stigma these findings play an important role in health policy, improving child health outcomes.
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Front Behav Neurosci · Jan 2014
Why empathy has a beneficial impact on others in medicine: unifying theories.
The past decades have seen an explosion of studies on empathy in various academic domains including affective neuroscience, psychology, medicine, and economics. However, the volumes of research have almost exclusively focused on its evolutionary origins, development, and neurobiological bases, as well as how the experience of empathy is modulated by social context and interpersonal relationships. ⋯ We then propose two non-mutually exclusive mechanistic explanations that contribute to explain the positive effects of physician empathy on patients. (1) The social baseline theory (SBT), building on social support research, proposes that the presence of other people helps individuals to conserve metabolically costly somatic and neural resources through the social regulation of emotion. (2) The free energy principle (FEP) postulates that the brain optimizes a (free energy) bound on surprise or its complement value to respond to environmental changes adaptively. These conceptualizations can be combined to provide a unifying integrative account of the benefits of physicians' empathetic attitude on their patients and how it plays a role in healing beyond the mere effect of the therapeutic alliance.