The role of group decision making processes in the creation of clinical guidelines

Abstract

Guideline development groups are an integral part of evidence-based healthcare and will remain so for the foreseeable future. There is a need for the efficient production of high-quality guidelines both to ensure high standards of care and to conserve resources. Social psychological research on group processes provides valuable information that can be applied to studying the functioning of guideline development groups, including the methods they use to develop recommendations. This article describes four key concepts in the group process literature: information sharing, systematic processing, group development, and group potential productivity. We evaluate their importance for guideline development groups and conclude with methodological suggestions for the study of these complex processes.     

The role of group decision making processes in the creation of clinical guidelines

Guideline development groups are an integral part of evidence-based healthcare and will remain so for the foreseeable future. There is a need for the efficient production of high-quality guidelines both to ensure high standards of care and to conserve resources. Social psychological research on group processes provides valuable information that can be applied to studying the functioning of guideline development groups, including the methods they use to develop recommendations. This article describes four key concepts in the group process literature: information sharing, systematic processing, group development, and group potential productivity. We evaluate their importance for guideline development groups and conclude with methodological suggestions for the study of these complex processes.     

The creation of an art workshop within a hospital

Organising an arts activity within a hospital unit is not simple. But if it is well thought out and forms part of a healthcare process, it can have an important role to play. An example at Montperrin hospital in Aix-en-Provence.     

The medicine of nurturing life energy--health creation and self-organization]

It is reality that human's body and mind are being created by life energy through every moment of life. As modern medicine does not consider this life energy itself, the most modern people hardly does not think it's intuitive meaning and use it to actualize their health and happiness in life. They can consider the outcome of life phenomena in the fields of physical, psychological, sociological and ethical sides, but they can not ask what life energy is, and subsequently can not use it in their life. Therefore, they live to make effort to actualize how to change life style considering of medical scientific facts (Evidence-Based-Medical Health Care). The intuitive life's action which can contact with the outer worlds, has the dynamic relationship with them and it creates new body and mind continuously. Modern medicine has not researched this dynamic life energy itself. What has life energy, single gene, single cell, single organ such as the brain and heart and single human beings, have been maintained their life by using their common and universal two life energies which are called self-organization, self-creativity and communicative ability. These two life energies of them were communicating with themselves or each others and their environments, and recreating their form and function continuously every moment of lives. It was conceptualized "Body-Mind-Spirit (Life-energy)-Life Dynamics". All of life phenomena which are not only diseases but also health, come from the results of "Body-Mind-Spirit-Life Dynamics". When we communicate with the outer worlds in "Real Self", human beings will keep the highest state of "Body-Mind-Spirit-Life Dynamics". We clarified that human beings can actualize the healthy and happy lives by themselves from understanding this idea, it also means for them to be able to create healthy personality through their lives and we clarified new assessment way of life energy simultaneously.     

Schizophrenics' mutual glance patterns

The schizophrenic patient is often quite incommunicative about his current or past interpersonal relationships. Many workers feel that interviews with the schizophrenic's parents are also unreliable means of getting direct verbal information. Such pessimism is based on their experience that parents of schizophrenics often distort or delete information because of a concern with appearances, an inability to communicate adequately, or an investment in maintaining the patient status of their offspring. Difficulty in getting verbal data limits the therapist's understanding of the schizophrenic and his relationship with people. Observation of implicit communications through gestural interaction provides an important alternate means of getting information about interpersonal relationships which does not necessarily require the cooperation of the patient or his parents. As research in gestural communication improves, it should be possible to attempt a more detailed investigation of the interaction between the schizophrenic patients and others. Through the use of gestural or other implicitly communicative indices, such qualities as seductiveness, hostility, dependency, dominance, and others may ultimately prove to be measurable. Research has demonstrated that gestural behavior as a means of imlicit communication is indicative, in a gross sense, of the quality of interaction between people (Ekman, 1965; Exline and Winter, 1965). This study is concerned with mutual glances--moments in which two people look directly at each other at the same time so that their eyes meet.     

The aid of computerized tomography in hemifacial spasm.

Although the physiopathological mechanisms causing hemifacial spasm are not clearly understood, it is generally accepted that the causative factor is compression of the facial nerve at its root exit zone. In this paper we present seven cases of hemifacial spasm which were studied by dynamic CT scanning in the preoperative period, and treated with microvascular decompression. We suggest that CT scanning has considerable diagnostic value in disclosing the asymmetrical vascular formation causing root exit zone compression and that microvascular decompression should be the treatment of choice in this condition.