How to optimize physicians' communication skills in cancer care: results of a randomized study assessing the usefulness of posttraining consolidation workshops.

PURPOSE: Although there is wide recognition of the usefulness of improving physicians' communication skills, no studies have yet assessed the efficacy of post-training consolidation workshops. This study aims to assess the efficacy of six 3-hour consolidation workshops conducted after a 2.5-day basic training program. METHODS: Physicians, after attending the basic training program, were randomly assigned to consolidation workshops or to a waiting list. Training efficacy was assessed through simulated and actual patient interviews that were audiotaped at baseline and after consolidation workshops for the consolidation-workshop group, and approximately 5 months after the end of basic training for the waiting-list group. Communication skills were assessed according to the Cancer Research Campaign Workshop Evaluation Manual. Patients' perceptions of communication skills improvement were assessed using a 14-item questionnaire. RESULTS: Sixty-three physicians completed the training program. Communication skills improved significantly more in the consolidation-workshop group compared with the waiting-list group. In simulated interviews, group-by-time repeated measures analysis of variance showed a significant increase in open and open directive questions (P =.014) and utterances alerting patients to reality (P =.049), as well as a significant decrease in premature reassurance (P =.042). In actual patient interviews, results revealed a significant increase in acknowledgements (P =.022) and empathic statements (P =.009), in educated guesses (P =.041), and in negotiations (P =.008). Patients interacting with physicians who benefited from consolidation workshops reported higher scores concerning their physicians' understanding of their disease (P =.004). CONCLUSION: Consolidation workshops further improve a communication skills training program's efficacy and facilitate the transfer of acquired skills to clinical practice.     

Increased susceptibility to vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus intestinal colonization persists after completion of anti-anaerobic antibiotic treatment in mice.

BACKGROUND: Antibiotic-associated disruption of the indigenous intestinal microflora may persist beyond the treatment period. Although piperacillin/tazobactam inhibits the establishment of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) stool colonization in mice during treatment, we hypothesized that this agent and other anti-anaerobic antibiotics would increase susceptibility to colonization during the period of recovery of the intestinal microflora. DESIGN: Mice received 10(4) colony-forming units of vancomycin-resistant E. faecium by orogastric inoculation 2, 5, or 10 days after completing 5 days of subcutaneous antibiotic treatment, or both during and 2 days after the completion of treatment. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) was performed to assess changes in the intestinal microflora. RESULTS: Anti-anaerobic antibiotics (ie, piperacillin/ tazobactam, cefoxitin, and clindamycin) caused significant disruption of the indigenous microflora (mean DGGE similarity indices < or = 27% in comparison with saline controls) and promoted the establishment of high-density colonization when VRE was inoculated 2 or 5, but not 10, days following treatment (P < .001). Piperacillin/tazobactam exhibited a biphasic effect on the establishment of colonization (ie, inhibition when exposed to VRE during treatment and promotion when exposed to VRE after discontinuation of treatment), resulting in greater overall promotion of colonization than did agents with minimal anti-anaerobic activity (ie, levofloxacin, cefepime, and aztreonam) when VRE was inoculated both during and 2 days after treatment (P < .001). CONCLUSION: Patients receiving anti-anaerobic antibiotics, including piperacillin/tazobactam, may be susceptible to the establishment of high-density VRE colonization during the period of recovery of the anaerobic microflora.     

Aftershocks: Home Loss and Long-Term Health after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake

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From hurricanes to earthquakes, natural disasters affect survivors in innumerable ways, including adverse effects on mental¹ and physical² health. Only a few studies have been able to assess a consistent set of health indicators both before and after a disaster due to the unpredictability of such events. However, in a study recently published in Environmental Health Perspectives,³ a team of researchers was able to use preexisting data from the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study to assess a wide array of health and well-being outcomes before and up to 9 years after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.The authors used data from a cohort of older individuals who came from the city of Iwanuma. The tsunami that followed the earthquake killed more than 180 people in Iwanuma, inundated nearly half the city, and destroyed 5,542 houses. Most of the 2,167 individuals in the current study sustained some degree of damage to their homes during the 2011 disaster; 4% suffered a complete home loss.Open in a separate windowThe Great East Japan Earthquake and related tsunami completely destroyed 122,000 dwellings in all and damaged another 1 million, according to estimates from 2021.⁵ Image: © Gallo Images/Contributor via Getty Images.The study examined the longitudinal associations between complete home loss specifically and 34 health indicators categorized as physical health, mental health (e.g., symptoms of depression or posttraumatic stress), health behaviors/sleep (e.g., dozing off during the day), social well-being (participation in society), cognitive social capital (perceptions about social relations in the community), subjective well-being (happiness and life satisfaction), and prosocial or altruistic behaviors (e.g., sharing). This “outcome-wide” framework—namely, assessing the relationship between a single exposure and multiple outcomes—is a relatively new approach.⁴“Epidemiologic research on disaster survivors has focused on mental health problems as an outcome,” says lead author Koichiro Shiba, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We know little about how a disaster influences key aspects of human well-being that cannot be captured by looking at mental health alone. This knowledge gap motivated us to employ the outcome-wide framework to examine the relationship between the disaster experience and well-being.”After 9 years, complete home loss was associated with increased symptoms of posttraumatic stress, depression, and hopelessness. People who lost their homes were also more likely to experience daytime sleepiness along with lower levels of trust in the community, community attachment, perceptions of mutual help in the community, and prosociality. The researchers saw more modest associations between complete home loss and having more chronic conditions, higher body mass index, and decreased happiness. Home loss was not associated with the remaining indicators.“The most surprising result to me was the strong association between home loss and decreased social capital; it is notable that the association persisted even nine years after the disaster,” Shiba says. “By that time, buildings in the flooded area had been rebuilt and people had already moved out of the temporary shelters and lived in permanent housing. It is difficult and takes time to reconstruct social capital once it is destroyed, highlighting the importance of efforts to preserve preexisting social capital.”“This is an excellent piece of scholarship. The longevity of the disruptive effect is astonishing: 9 years post-event, participants are still experiencing distress related to the earthquake event,” says Katie E. Cherry, the Emogene Pliner Distinguished Professor of Aging Studies at Louisiana State University and author The Other Side of Suffering, which covers her research on survivor recovery after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “Most important from a methodological point of view is the authors’ use of a prospective design,” she says, explaining that the availability of pre-event data allowed for a cleaner assessment of earthquake exposure effects.“It’s nice to see the authors’ inclusion of social capital and mental health consequences as outcome variables,” Cherry adds. Yet she found the notion of cognitive social capital to be conceptually ambiguous. The authors included in that term trust and mutual help in the community, as well as community attachment. “There is a large [body of] literature on social capital, which is a well-established social science construct,” Cherry says. “To my knowledge, there may be a dimension of social capital that is cognitive, but I am not aware of a ‘cognitive social capital.’”“Although we intuitively understand that losing a home during a natural hazard or disaster is incredibly harmful, this study has used extensive quantitative data from more than 2,000 survivors over a decade to show how broadly damaging it can be,” says Daniel Aldrich, a professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University. “It is not just the loss of one’s physical property that changes one’s life. It is also the forced relocation that follows which pulls people away from their pre-disaster family, neighbors, and friends. In short, they lose their social networks, and these networks are powerful determinants of social and mental health.”     

Getting the most out of your IP--patent management along its life cycle

Effectively managing and optimizing the value of the patent portfolio is a major challenge for many firms, especially those in knowledge intensive industries, such as the pharmaceutical, biotechnological and chemical industry. However, insights on effective patent portfolio strategies are rare. Therefore, in this article we investigate in detail how firms successfully manage and optimize their patent portfolios to increase their overall competitiveness. We discover that successful patent portfolio management is rooted in managing the patents along their life cycles. Based on the findings of ten case studies, we develop a holistic patent life cycle management model reflecting five distinctive phases of patent management: explore, generate, protect, optimize and decline. We conclude with how our findings can be used in practice.     

Feeding practices in public hospitals’ neonatal intensive care units: An exploration into the ways in which COVID-19 affected the best practice in Gauteng

BackgroundSouth Africa’s healthcare system has a multitude of pre-existing challenges prior to the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, ranging from reduced number of staff, lack of resources and units being at overcapacity both in the adult and paediatric populations. The neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) require a team approach to ensure best practice with vulnerable infants, but little is known about how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown restrictions impacted the feeding practices within the NICU.ObjectivesThis study aimed to explore the impact that COVID-19 had on the feeding practices within the NICU settings in public hospitals in Gauteng.MethodsA qualitative design was employed with data collected in two NICUs in Gauteng. Data were collected in the form of observations and semi-structured interviews with healthcare workers (HCWs) in the NICU. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis.ResultsAlthough the sample size of participants was limited, social distancing proved to be a challenge resulting in mothers and healthcare workers being given restricted access. This had effects on the ability to provide adequate feeding practices and resulted in anxiety for the mothers and mental health challenges for the HCWs when feeding these at-risk infants. A limitation of this study was the use of only two sites.ConclusionCOVID-19 amplified the existing challenges in the NICU. A multidisciplinary and family-centred approach to address feeding challenges is required to offset the challenges resulting from the pandemic and subsequent lockdown.     

Timely follow‐up of positive cancer screening results: A systematic review and recommendations from the PROSPR Consortium

Timely follow‐up for positive cancer screening results remains suboptimal, and the evidence base to inform decisions on optimizing the timeliness of diagnostic testing is unclear. This systematic review evaluated published studies regarding time to follow‐up after a positive screening for breast, cervical, colorectal, and lung cancers. The quality of available evidence was very low or low across cancers, with potential attenuated or reversed associations from confounding by indication in most studies. Overall, evidence suggested that the risk for poorer cancer outcomes rises with longer wait times that vary within and across cancer types, which supports performing diagnostic testing as soon as feasible after the positive result, but evidence for specific time targets is limited. Within these limitations, we provide our opinion on cancer‐specific recommendations for times to follow‐up and how existing guidelines relate to the current evidence. Thresholds set should consider patient worry, potential for loss to follow‐up with prolonged wait times, and available resources. Research is needed to better guide the timeliness of diagnostic follow‐up, including considerations for patient preferences and existing barriers, while addressing methodological weaknesses. Research is also needed to identify effective interventions for reducing wait times for diagnostic testing, particularly in underserved or low‐resource settings. CA Cancer J Clin 2018;68:199–216 . © 2018 American Cancer Society .