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Biomedical subjects

J S O'Shea

Publications and source records attributed to J S O'Shea.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1991

House-fire and drowning deaths among children and young adults.

House fires and drownings remain frequent causes of pediatric and young adult mortality and morbidity, yet have received less attention than other causes of injury to the young. To investigate the gender, racial and socio-economic components of these problems, as well as the contribution of chronic disabilities, all deaths in a single state over a 7-year period in the birth through 24-year-old population were studied. Females and males overall had no appreciable differences in house-fire mortality. Females from birth through age 4 were more at risk, however, than older females of dying in house fires, but did not appear at more risk than males of the same age. Nonwhite males under age 4 were much more at risk than white males. Nonwhite females compared similarly to white females, both in the birth through 4-year age range, as well as in the overall population studied. Males had more drowning deaths overall than females, with most of the difference attributable to a large male predominance in the 15- through 24-year age group. Furthermore, males in this age group were much more likely to drown than were younger males. Both males and females in this age group were at particular risk if they had a past history of seizures. No other gender or racial differences could be determined, either in the overall population or in the separate age groups, except in victims greater than 4 years of age many more deaths were found in the lower three socio-economic quintiles than in the higher two.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Correlations between appointment keeping and reorganization of hospital ambulatory pediatric services.

Over a period of 13 months before and after a university-affiliated hospital's daytime ambulatory pediatric facility was upgraded from an episodic care clinic to a primary care unit, 260 subjects were interviewed in an attempt to predict compliance with return appointment scheduling. The parents of patients more than 10 years of age were the least compliant, but most of the differences in compliance appeared due to the subject's evaluation of the diagnostic ability, thoroughness, and sympathy of the physician at the initial visit. Although no changes were noted in the subjects' demographic characteristics or in their general opinions of ambulatory health care delivery or of attitudes desired of physicians, their evaluations of recent visits improved and the missed appointment rate declined by 46% in the course of the study. Moreover, the pediatric house officers, who evaluated the patients, demonstrated an increased ability to assess the characteristics the subjects found important in physicians. Improvements are still needed, especially in the amount of communication between house officers, patients, and parents, but heeding clients' opinions about the provision of primary health care may help to make missed appointment rates negligible.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Pilot evaluation of teaching strategies in ambulatory pediatrics.

Creating an effective learning experience for medical students in ambulatory pediatrics can be a problem. In a pilot study several strategies to improve learning were tested on 51 students during their eight-week basic pediatric clerkship. Each student spent half of this clerkship in the outpatient area. Thirty-six received a detailed list of cognitive and skill objectives at the beginning of their outpatient experience, and 18 of these also had structured individual teaching sessions with a staff pediatrician. The individual teaching sessions tended to improve performance in patient evaluation skills, but neither approach improved the attainment of factual knowledge or the students' evaluations of their outpatient experiences. Further study of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of various teaching technics is needed.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed1975

Computer-assisted pediatric diagnosis.

A system for computer aid to diagnosis was tested on 90 children hospitalized with systemic illness and discharged with a final diagnosis. A medical secretary and a pediatrician were equally successful (78% vs 77%) in having the system list the main final diagnosis when each independently supplied a list of details extracted only from the pediatric intern's admission notes. Even when the final diagnosis was not considered by the pediatric house staff and attending physicians caring for the patient until after the day of admission, the system was accurate in listing the diagnosis (or in raising the correct line of diagnostic inquiry) in at least 85% of the patients.

Adolescent↗