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Biomedical subjects

J M Merrill

Publications and source records attributed to J M Merrill.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1993

Machiavellianism in medical students.

To be more responsive to the nation's health needs, medical educators should identify those personal qualities associated with effective primary medical care. For this research Machiavellianism was chosen as a tracer character trait opposed to the characteristics embodied in an ideal family physician. A survey was conducted of 167 freshmen from one medical school and 823 seniors from four medical schools, with Machiavellianism scores used to predict their professional role characteristics, attributional style toward patients, and choice of a career specialty. Results showed that 15% of all students scored positively on the Machiavellianism scale. Mean Machiavellianism scores for seniors did not differ from those for freshmen. Men had higher Machiavellianism scores than women. Those students with high Machiavellianism scores relied excessively on high-tech medicine and were externally controlled, intolerant of ambiguity, and authoritarian. Seniors' high Machiavellianism scores predicted a negative attributional style toward geriatric and hypochondriac patients, thereby validating the use of Machiavellianism to measure medical students' indifference to patients and their problems.

Career Choice↗
PubMed1991

Access to high-tech health care. Ethics.

Access to health care has always been limited by personal and social economics. Poverty remains one element that correlates with poor prognosis in all varieties of cancer. Prior to becoming standard therapy, elements of high-tech health care are often widely available as research protocols, participation in which is generally available without considerations of insurance coverage or personal wealth. Any person may still volunteer participation in research protocols and thereby partake in high-tech advances even before these become standard therapy. However, recent developments in the conduct of research now may limit participation. Medicare and third party insurance payers proscribe payment for research project care and always have. Recently, more than ever before, reimbursements to physicians and health care institutions have been more closely scrutinized to reject all payment in research settings. In situations in which cost and availability of the new technology, whether machine or drug, limit participation, research entrepreneurs have made research participation available to only those who can pay for it. These and similar developments threaten to limit access to high-tech health care and to actually impede cancer research.

Beneficence↗
PubMed1990

Why doctors have difficulty with sex histories.

Studies have shown that physicians' performance has not been as good as it should be in detecting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and in counseling patients about their transmission. The AIDS pandemic has underscored the need to find out why this is true. In our study, we identified the major reasons physicians believe other doctors fail to take adequate sex histories. Scales were then developed to measure the three principal reasons given by these physicians: embarrassment, belief that the sex history is not relevant to the patient's chief complaint, and belief by the physicians that they are not adequately trained. When 350 senior medical students were surveyed, 93% thought that knowledge of a patient's sexual practices is an important part of their patient's medical history, but 50% felt poorly trained to take this history and 25% felt embarrassed to ask the necessary questions. To learn why some students score well on these three dimensions and others do not, a limited number of personal attributes were measured and correlated with the scores on these three measures. Shyness and social anxiety as a personal trait predicted which student was most likely to experience embarrassment in taking a sex history. A nonsympathetic view of patients' psychosocial problems was the variable most closely related to the belief that the sex history was of little importance in understanding a patient's problem. Students who believed this most strongly were the same ones who were most homophobic, authoritarian, and had the greatest fear of AIDS infection. The sense of not feeling adequately trained to take a sex history related most strongly to low self-esteem. How these barriers to STD risk assessment might be overcome is discussed.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1989

AIDS and student attitudes.

When recently polled, one half of 4,100 physicians believed they had the right not to treat patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and 15% said they would actually refuse to care for them. To assure medical care for the 365,000 AIDS patients projected for the US by 1992, it is imperative to know whether there is something unique about AIDS patients that produces aversion among physicians. We hypothesized that the desire to avoid AIDS patients derived from three fears: fear of contagion, homophobia, and a desire to avoid dying patients. To identify the extent to which these three fears affect the attitudes that students hold toward AIDS patients, we conducted three studies. In our first study, we discovered that students' views about a patient with a terminal illness are the same whether the illness is leukemia or AIDS. In the second study, we found that the patient's sexual preference was not the major reason students would avoid an AIDS patients. In a third study, we confirmed that fear of contagion is the principal cause of students' desire to avoid an AIDS patient. In the course of these studies, we found important differences between the attitudes of male and female students. Female students scored lower on the homophobic scale than male students, and they had less antipathy toward AIDS patients. Helping health care professionals understand their fears toward patients with AIDS will in the long run improve medical care. Since the origins of these fears are for the most part well hidden in our unconscious, dissemination of facts alone will not do the job. Interventions are needed to help health care professionals acknowledge and overcome their negative feelings about AIDS.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1989

Attitudes toward AIDS.

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Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1987

Culture as a determinant of "humanistic traits" in medical residents.

In this cross-cultural study of Puerto Rican and Texas physicians, we have tested the hypothesis that physicians' "humanistic attributes" are culturally related. Differences (P = .05 to .01) were found between mean responses of the two groups of residents to seven of the questions on the Totalitarian-Authoritarian-Dogmatism scale. Factor analysis determined that the two principal components of disagreement were medical political and ethical issues (P = .001) but not patients and their problems. Faculty responses provided additional evidence that customs and traditions influence how professional subgroups manifest attitudes: Puerto Rican faculty rated residents highest on "humanistic traits" if they self-reported high ethical scores, and lowest if they self-reported high radical scores; Baylor faculty reflected the "age-drag" on changing values by differing (P = .05 to .001) from both groups of residents on 38% of the questions. The difficulty of rating residents with a universal standard of "humanistic traits" is supported by the culture and age-specific differences reported herein.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1987

Troublesome aspects of the patient-physician relationship: a study of human factors.

We investigated three onerous aspects of the patient-physician relationship using contemporary psychosocial research methods. A "hassle index" identified three dimensions of vexation in practice: problems with running a practice, medical conditions of patients, and social characteristics of patients. In general, hassle was found to be dependent on the type of practice, but physicians were equally annoyed by unlikeable patients irrespective of their practice site. Diagnostic errors made by resident physicians from various clinics were more related to an unlikeable medical disorder than to differences in the clinics. To clarify doctors' negative feelings toward patients, a questionnaire measuring antipathy toward specific patient types was administered to physicians. Responses indicated that physicians' antipathy was unrelated to the doctors' ethical beliefs and their medicopolitical orientation. Personality variables indicative of "extremeness" of opinion about patients included high needs for dominance, low needs for nurturance and "intraception" (the ability to analyze the behavior and motives of others), and low self-esteem. Personality profiles of physicians least vexed by medical practice reflected less psychopathology--less self-derogation, less need for emotional support, and more extroversion. Medical College Aptitude Test scores revealed that high science scores were associated with extremeness of opinion, and low scores on general information were indicative of increased susceptibility to the daily irritations of medical practice.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1986

Measuring "humanism" in medical residents.

The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has charged directors of residency programs with evaluating "humanistic attributes" in residents seeking certification. To investigate whether traditional measures of residents' performance assess humanistic attributes, 38 second- and third-year medical residents completed the Totalitarian-Authoritarian-Dogmatism (TAD) and Rokeach tests for attitudinal assessment. Five primary sources were used to measure performance. When the measures of performance and attitude were correlated, two negative correlations with "antipathy toward patients" were found: professional maturity (r = -.43, P less than .01) and compassion and concern for patients (r = -.35, P less than .04). The TAD Opinionnaire and the special performance evaluation detect "nonhumanistic dimensions" that routine faculty assessments do not. Since the new Likert scale distributed by ABIM does not differ materially from the rating form used at Baylor for 2 1/2 years, it is unlikely that "humanistic attributes" will be measured by the ABIM's new scale.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗