Biomedical subjects

Katja Elfriede Wartenberg

Publications and source records attributed to Katja Elfriede Wartenberg.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Are neurology residents in the United States being taught defensive medicine?

OBJECTIVE: To study whether and how fear of litigation and defensive medicine are communicated during residency training and to assess whether this affects residents' attitudes. METHODS: Neurology residents in the US (n=25) and, as a control group, Neurology residents training in Germany (n=42) were asked to rate multiple items regarding litigation, defensive strategies and how often these issues are raised by teaching physicians. Statistic analysis was performed using nonparametric tests. RESULTS: Residents in both countries indicated that litigation is an "important problem", although US residents stated this significantly more often (p<0.001). Initiation of tests motivated mainly by fear of litigation (p=0.004) and explicit teaching of defensive strategies by teaching physicians (p<0.02) were reported more often by US residents. CONCLUSION: Neurology residents in both the US and Germany perceive a litigational threat, but significantly less so in Germany. This difference may result at least in part from teaching of defensive strategies reported more often in US programs.

Defensive Medicine↗

PubMed2005

Multimodal brain monitoring in the neurological intensive care unit: where does continuous EEG fit in?

Continuous EEG (cEEG) is a vital component of patient monitoring in the neurologic intensive care unit, allowing the intensivist to diagnose nonconvulsive seizure activity. Though still in its infancy, Fourier-transformed cEEG data are also increasingly being used in ICUs to monitor global cerebral activity and cortical function. In conjunction with other components of multimodality neurologic monitoring, including intracranial pressure, cerebral blood flow, brain tissue oxygen tension monitoring, transcranial Doppler, and microdialysis monitoring, cEEG provides unique data regarding the electrical activity of the brain. The main challenge for clinicians and researchers will be to understand how these different aspects of multimodality monitoring relate to each other, and how physiologic variables such as blood pressure, osmolality, and temperature can be manipulated to optimize cerebral function and tissue survival in the setting of acute injury.

Brain↗

PubMed2004

Introducing new technology: handheld computers and drug databases. A comparison between two residency programs.

There have been numerous efforts to introduce and increase the use of handheld computers, also called personal digital assistants (PDA), in health care, one of which is the distribution of PDAs to Neurology residents at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The authors examined the success of this intervention by comparing PDA use and user attitudes between residents of the intervention group and residents in another residency program where the use of PDAs is neither encouraged nor discouraged. The authors examined in particular the use of drug databases on the PDA as its currently most popular application in health care. The use of PDAs for purposes not related to health care was widespread among individuals in both programs, but the use of drug databases was significantly more common in the control group, which can be interpreted as a success of the intervention.

Adult↗