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Biomedical subjects

L Laux

Publications and source records attributed to L Laux.

15 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

Is obstetrics-gynecology a primary care specialty?

Suddenly everyone wants more primary care physicians. For several years, we collected data from senior medical students to relate their attitudes and beliefs about several clinical problems common to primary care to their choices of residencies. Because the Texas Medical Association's Special Committee on Primary Care included obstetrics-gynecology as a primary care specialty, we reviewed our data to see if the personal traits and professional role characteristics of seniors choosing obstetrics-gynecology differed materially from those of seniors choosing family medicine, internal medicine, or pediatrics. Results of this analysis put obstetrics-gynecology about as firmly in the primary care group as if the experimental design had planned it that way.

Family Practice↗
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.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

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↗
PubMed1978

The impact of stress experience on heart rate and task performance in the presence of a novel stressor.

The impact of prior stress experience on heart rate and task performance in the presence of a novel stressor was studied. During a training phase 42 female students were required to solve arithmetical problems under conditions of either no stressor, delayed auditory feedback, or distraction. Subsequently in a testing phase all subjects performed the same task in the presence of delayed auditory feedback. Training in the presence of stress resulted in decreased heart rate and better performance in the testing phase. These data were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that training under stress-inducing conditions increases stress resistance which generalizes to a novel stressor and which leads subjects to experience the novel stressor as being less stressful.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1975

Use of a single gibbon in laboratory research.

The high cost of behavioral research with primates may be partially reduced by borrowing animals from a zoo. This report describes such an arrangement involving an adult female gibbon. Operant conditioning data are presented to show that an isolated animal may be used for research.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Visual interpretation of blood glucose test strips.

Patients with type II, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) typically are middle-aged or older and often have diabetic retinopathy. The visual acuity of these patients also is likely to be reduced beyond what is normally associated with age. Because Medicaid does not reimburse NIDDM patients for a blood glucose meter unless they are insulin-dependent, many low-income diabetes patients are required to monitor their blood glucose levels by visually comparing the color spot on the blood glucose test strip with a series of standard color blocks. Unless patients can accurately assess their blood glucose levels by visual interpretation of the test strips, they will have difficulty maintaining adequate glycemic control. In this study, 60 nondiabetic adults, ages 20 to 78 years, were unable to adequately assess blood glucose levels visually, even under optimal lighting conditions. Younger adults made the same number of errors as older adults, and poor visual acuity and high blood glucose values were associated with more errors. These findings suggest that patients with poor visual acuity or those who read their blood glucose strips in less-than-adequate lighting will make even more errors than our test subjects.

Adult↗