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Biomedical subjects

L J Muzzin

Publications and source records attributed to L J Muzzin.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1994

The experience of cancer.

The illness career of the person with cancer has been characterized as a 'living-dying' experience in which, faced with the intolerable incompatibility of life and death, the individual and his or her family attempt to maintain control and 'normalize' everyday activity. Unfortunately, in their everyday struggles, families in North America appear to face social isolation from existing community services and networks that might assist them. Perhaps because the illness is so heavily medicalized and stigmatized, most persons with cancer and their families do not participate in them. A minority benefit from self-help organizations such as Cancer Society groups and survivor coalitions. The palliative care and hospice/home care movements provide an alternative to dying in the acute-care hospital, again, for a minority. Half of those with cancer survive more than 5 years; for these persons, the ordeal has just begun. Survivors must cope with physical disabilities due to surgery and the side effects of other treatments, the psychological traumas of fear of recurrence and social stigma, and the disappointment of a considerably reduced range of future possibilities for career and development. The fact that their relationships with others are negatively affected is well documented, particularly with intimate relationships. In a sense, a person never really 'gets over' cancer: it is a sword of Damocles that continues to hang over the individual and his or her family for the rest of the person's life.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1994

Consequences of feminization of a profession: the case of Canadian pharmacy.

Although the influx of women into formerly entirely male-dominated professions has attracted much commentary from members of these professions, little investigation of the consequences of rapid, large-scale feminization has been undertaken for particular professions. The results of a pilot study in Canadian pharmacy suggest that fears of shortages due to women working part-time while they raise their children, are unfounded. However, our survey results suggest that women are differentially drawn into pharmacies run by corporations rather than independent businesses. This may allow them to reorient pharmacy away from its business base and towards its chosen new professional jurisdiction of counselling. On the other hand, the demise of independent pharmacy, that traditionally attracted males, may bring with it less control by pharmacists over what they do in everyday practice. The possibility that similar processes are operating in other feminizing professions with entrepreneurial components, such as dentistry and optometry, should be investigated.

Canada↗
PubMed1993

Hospital and community pharmacists' attitudes towards clinical pharmacy.

This longitudinal study compared the attitudes of the Class of 1983 at the University of Toronto toward clinical pharmacy seven years after graduation with those they expressed at the point of graduation in 1983. Over three quarters of the original class responded by indicating agreement or disagreement with statements (on a 5-point scale) about clinical pharmacy in 1983 and 1989. While there was little difference between those who became hospital pharmacists versus those who became community pharmacists at the point of graduation, seven years later, the hospital pharmacists were significantly more favourable than their colleagues toward drug consulting aspects of clinical pharmacy. The community pharmacists were significantly more favourable than their colleagues toward patient counselling aspects of clinical pharmacy. It is concluded that the work setting has influenced these different preferences for how the ideal of clinical pharmacy is interpreted. We offer a possible explanation for the consistently positive, if divergent, orientations towards the ideal of clinical pharmacy.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1989

The development of expertise in dermatology.

To examine the development of expertise in dermatology, accuracy of diagnosis and response times of subjects at five levels of expertise were assessed. A total of 100 slides, 2 typical and 3 atypical slides from each of 20 common skin disorders, were presented to six subjects at each of the following levels: second-year preclinical medical students, final year medical students, residents in family medicine, general practitioners, and dermatologists. Accuracy of diagnosis rose from 21% for medical students to 87% for dermatologists. Correct diagnosis was associated with a decrease in response time with expertise, whereas errors were associated with a dramatic increase in response time, and was slower than correct response times at all levels, suggesting that errors do not result predominantly from carelessness or speed. Typical slides accounted for a constant proportion of diagnostic errors at all higher levels of expertise, and experts continued to make a significant proportion of errors on slides shown to be relatively easy for residents. The results are shown to be at variance with any model that equates expertise with the mastery of complex rules, but they are consistent with models of expertise that propose that expertise is equated with a rapid "pattern-recognition" process, and errors result from unintended confusion with previous similar examples.

Dermatology↗
PubMed1985

Knowledge and clinical problem-solving.

A consistent finding in the literature on measures of clinical problem-solving scores is that there are very low correlations across different problems. This phenomenon is commonly labelled 'content-specificity', implying that the scores differ because the content knowledge necessary to solve the problems differs. The present study tests this hypothesis by presenting groups of residents and clinical clerks with a series of simulated patient problems in which content was systematically varied. Each subject also completed a multiple choice test with questions linked to each diagnosis presented in the clinical problems. Three of the four problem-solving scores showed low correlations, even to two presentations of the same problem, and no relationship to content differences. None of the scores were related to performance on the multiple choice test. The results suggest that variability in problem-solving scores is related to factors other than content knowledge, and several possibilities are discussed.

Canada↗