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Results for “Making Difficult Health Care Decisions”

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PubMed1992

[Hygienic and health conditions at scout camps].

In 1990, 230 scout camps organized throughout the whole of Poland (except for the Legnica and Lódź voivodeships) were inspected. In co-operation with the staff of the children's and youth hygiene departments of the provincial sanitary-and-epidemiological stations, the data concerning the hygienic and health conditions at scout camps collected. Moreover, information on medical care, health state and nutrition at these camps was obtained. The data showed that in the period under survey, despite some exceptions, the hygienic and health conditions at scout camps could be regarded as satisfactory, when making allowances for the current limited organizing, financial and staff-related possibilities of scouting. In the present difficult economic situation of Poland, when the standard of living of many families is low, special attention has to be given to balanced nutrition of children, which is decisive of their normal psychophysical development.

Camping↗

PubMed2002

Ethical challenges in end-of-life therapies in the elderly.

With the increasing numbers of elderly in the population of all western countries and the increasing life expectancy at birth, many seniors spend the last period of their life with various afflictions that may require the need for long-term institutional care. During the last period of life, many seniors and their families face decisions that challenge ethical principles and may cause conflict among family members as well as healthcare professionals. The commonly used ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice, although forming a useful foundation for the evaluation of decision-making dilemmas, alone cannot resolve many clinically challenging situations. Healthcare professionals must clearly understand the clinical state of the patient for whom a difficult decision is being contemplated. Levels of function, clinical symptoms, the expected trajectory of change and possible treatment options have to be balanced against the person's values and wishes, either self-expressed directly or through an advance directive, or communicated by surrogate decision makers. At times, physicians face difficult treatment dilemmas when patients or families request treatments that are not legally sanctioned, such as when physician-assisted suicide is requested by a suffering patient. At other times conflicts occur when patients or surrogates wish to continue with therapies that are no longer considered necessary or suitable by the physician. At the societal level, sometimes an expensive drug that is deemed necessary by the physicians is not covered by a government-sponsored or private health plan. The issue of distributive justice must be considered in a situation such as when long-term facilities or acute hospitals treating frail, cognitively impaired elders consider withholding or withdrawing various treatments because of poor clinical outcomes coupled with excessive costs. The often controversial issue of nutrition and hydration in the end-of-life period frequently causes treatment conflicts and dilemmas among surrogates and staff, as does the highly charged issue of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in this frail and very vulnerable population. The real challenge for healthcare providers in the field of geriatric long-term care is to balance compassionate and appropriate care with respect for the choices and wishes of patients and their families. This should be accomplished while at the same time safeguarding the professional standards and ethical integrity of healthcare providers responsible for this care.

Aged↗

PubMed1994

Modeling patient satisfaction and service quality.

The authors attempt to clarify and extend the conceptualization and measurement of consumer satisfaction and service quality in health services. Although the two constructs serve as cornerstones in the design and implementation of health care marketing strategies, a literature review suggests that satisfaction and service quality are currently difficult to distinguish--both conceptually and operationally--in health care settings. The findings from two studies conducted by the authors to distinguish the nature of these two important constructs within a health care marketing context reveal that a nonrecursive relationship between service quality and patient satisfaction may account for much of the conflicting evidence in the literature.

Data Collection↗

PubMed2000

Comprehensive STD/HIV prevention education targeting US adolescents: review of an ethical dilemma and proposed ethical framework.

Adolescents are increasingly at risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The prolonged latency period, sometimes in excess of five years, and the incubation period of up to 10 years before the manifestation of symptoms, may foster adolescents' false sense of invincibility and denial as they often do not see the devastating effects of the disease in their peers until they are older. In turn, their practice of safer sex may be hindered and thereby contribute to the escalation of this public health crisis among sexually active adolescents. Prevention-focused recommendations were made in the USA as a result of this crisis. Recommendations were made to: (1) include STD/HIV education in the curricula of grades kindergarten to 12; (2) increase to at least 75% the proportion of primary care and mental health professionals who provide age-appropriate STD/HIV prevention counselling to adolescents; and (3) expand HIV prevention services to include age-appropriate HIV education curricula for students in grades 4-12 in 95% of schools. Yet, in the USA, the provision of school-based comprehensive STD/HIV education has been difficult to achieve owing to certain limitations and, in some instances, legal action. These limitations include: limited student access; restricted content; and the implementation of sporadic and/or brief educational programmes. Given these recommendations and the fact that adolescents are acquiring STDs and HIV infections at increasing rates, and despite the limitations and legal actions, do health care professionals not have an ethical obligation to provide adolescents with comprehensive STD/HIV prevention education? This ethical dilemma will be discussed using the ethical decision-making principles of 'autonomy' and 'beneficence', and a decision-making model proposed by Thompson and Thompson, and by Chally and Loric.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Current status and trends in the development of medical information systems for morphological research].

The time of cooperative action of the information medical systems is coming. Standardization of clinical laboratory information systems is one of the most difficult but important problems for clinical laboratory community and technicians. Electronic data exchange requires agreement on the data element format by which healthcare institutions can exchange. Computerization of health care service raises the problem of security because the risk of violation of medical privacy is dramatically increasing. Unauthorized users can access, copy, alter, delete or distort hundreds or thousands of medical records within minutes. Information can be faulted by individuals or system failure. It is necessary to discuss and make a final decision of joining some standard for the purpose of integration.

Delivery of Health Care↗

PubMed1995

Merger acquisition or independence--small group decision--large group impact.

As this group practice looked to the future, two alternatives were considered--remain independent or merge with another entity. Remaining independent, although desirable, would be extremely difficult, so this group looked for a mutually beneficial affiliation. This case study details the beginning-to-end affiliation process--from seeking potential partners to signing the papers: the keys to success and potential dealbreakers.

Decision Making↗

PubMed1987

Resource allocation in health care: the allocation of lifestyles to providers.

The objective of this article has been to draw the spotlight onto a much neglected facet of the discussion on resource allocation in health care: the process by which society decides what lifestyle the providers of health care may extract, directly or indirectly, from the patient's pocket book. Given the slice of the GNP society surrenders to the providers of health care collectively, the quantity of real health care resources made available to patients obviously varies inversely with the elevation of the lifestyle attained by the providers. These reflections have been triggered by a vexing paradox plaguing contemporary American health care: incessant talk about rationing in the midst of plenty. Conference after conference in this country has been dedicated in recent years to the "agonizing choices visited upon American health care by the age of restricting resources." Remarkably, few of the avid conference organizers, and few of their fiery orators, ever stop to think just what resource flow has actually been constricting. Has it been the supply of physicians? Has it been the supply of hospital beds? Has it been the flow of real purchasing power into the health care system? In general, the preference has been to bypass these questions altogether and to lament in a data-free context. What has been contracting in American health care has not been the flow of money into the sector, nor the flow of professionals, facilities, and entrepreneurs seeking to to do well there by doing good, but, if anything at all, the flow of real health services from providers to patients, certainly to patients who are uninsured and of modest means. And what seems required to solve the sector's problem is not so much an infusion of yet larger sums of money, but a decision-making algorithm capable of using the money already in the system to redirect real health care resources from persons who now receive perilously too many health services to persons who now receive perilously too few. Part of such an algorithm, of course, would be a sensible determination of the lifestyles the health care process needs to support among the providers of care. Under the ideal circumstances envisaged by libertarian thinkers, the determination of these matters could safely be entrusted to the free market. For reasons not difficult to fathom, however, no modern society is willing to adopt that form of arbitration over resource allocation in health care.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Canada↗

PubMed1998

Total quality in information systems management: issues for the health care industry.

Faced with rising costs, growing demand and declining funding, hospitals and others must either cut services or improve the efficiency and effectiveness of what they do. Neither solution can be implemented without adequate relevant information. Without understanding which services are providing the most value to its customers, sensible cutbacks will be difficult to make. Improving efficiency requires a knowledge of where there are inefficiencies, and improving effectiveness requires an understanding of what the outcomes of health care are. The solution, as many have documented, is to create, as a first step, a database containing detailed health care patient data. In this paper, we present continuous improvement techniques as a requirement for the design and development of this much needed database.

Computer Security↗

PubMedDate not supplied

An invisible barrier to integrating HIV primary care with harm reduction services: philosophical clashes between the harm reduction and medical models.

Overall AIDS mortality in the United States has declined in recent years, but declines have not been consistent across all populations. Due to an array of barriers to care, minorities and poor people who are active substance users have not benefited as others have from advances in the treatment of HIV disease. One way to address this problem is to integrate HIV primary care into harm reduction programs that already effectively serve this population. Such collaborations, however, are difficult to initiate and sustain. Philosophical differences between the medical model and the harm reduction model, which often remain invisible to the parties involved, underlie these difficulties. This article addresses the issue by describing a partnership in the Bronx, NY, between CitiWide Harm Reduction Inc. (CitiWideHR) and the Montefiore Medical Center. It focuses specifically on the sources of philosophical differences between models, and briefly assesses the potential for successful collaborations of this sort.

Community-Institutional Relations↗

PubMed2000

Shifting the culture of continuing medical education: what needs to happen and why is it so difficult?

A revolution in health care is occurring as a result of changes in the practice of medicine and in society. These include changing demographics and the pattern of disease; new technologies; changes in health care delivery; increasing consumerism, patient empowerment, and autonomy; an emphasis on effectiveness and efficiency; and changing professional roles. The issues raised by these changes present challenges for the content and delivery of the whole continuum of medical education. The ways in which continuing medical education (CME) needs to respond to these challenges are outlined. The Informed Shared Decision Making (ISDM) Project at the University of British Columbia is used as a case study to illustrate some of the practical problems in providing CME that address these current trends in health care, is effective, and is attractive to physicians. Two particular problems are posed: how to respond to a demonstrated need when there is no perceived need on the part of physicians and how to enable change agents on the margins to develop allies and get ownership from stakeholders and opinion leaders on the inside. Two strategies for change are discussed: the substantive incorporation of CME into the continuum of medical education and the involvement of patients in the planning and delivery of CME. A final challenge is raised for the leaders of CME to define and agree what "shifting the culture of CME" means and to make a commitment of time and energy into making it happen.

British Columbia↗

PubMed1999

Considerations on the quality of medical software and information services.

Fast developments in information and communication technology have made it possible to develop new services for citizens. One of the most interesting areas is health care. Medical knowledge is usually valid all over the world that makes the market global. Information services and decision support software are becoming important tools for medical professionals but also ordinary citizens are interested in health related information. It has been estimated that by the year 2010 the turnover of health care telematics industry may be close to that of the drug industry today. The nature of this global information industry is very different from any industry in history. Since there are no frontiers, no clear products and no shops in the information market, it is difficult to develop any effective legislation. However, the history of medicine has shown that health care sector cannot be free from regulation without risking citizens' health. The huge commercial potential of the Internet has already been used to promote products and services that have no proven effect on health and that may sometimes be even dangerous. In this paper we discuss the needs and possibilities to assess the quality of medical decision support software and information services. For brevity the terms medical software and medical knowledge are used, but the issues also relate to informatics systems used by any health professional, and to computerised systems used to schedule care or to organise record systems.

Decision Support Systems, Clinical↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Oncofetal fibronectin: new insight into the physiology of implantation and labor.

Oncofetal fibronectin is a newly studied protein produced by the trophoblast and is present in plasma and cervicovaginal secretions of pregnant women as labor approaches or when they have certain complications of pregnancy. Alterations in levels of oncofetal fibronectin occur in preterm labor, postterm pregnancy, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. Determining the presence or absence of full-term and preterm labor often is difficult in the clinical setting, and decision-making sometimes is hindered by the lack of a specific biochemical marker for labor. Oncofetal fibronectin may become a clinical indicator or predictor of true labor, preterm labor, or some complications of pregnancy. Assay techniques that identify clinically meaningful levels of oncofetal fibronectin are being developed and investigated and soon may be available to screen and identify pregnant women at risk. Research findings suggest new paths for investigation that may lead to important interventions in health care directed at identifying and decreasing maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. This article reviews pertinent aspects of placentation and the rationale for using oncofetal fibronectin detection as a clinical marker for abnormal pregnancy states.

Adenosine Monophosphate↗

PubMed1983

Controlled assessment of diagnostic techniques: methodological problems.

The increasing requests for diagnostic tests is one of the many causes of rising costs in health care systems. Many health care professionals think today that this increase could be reduced if diagnostic tests were accurately assessed, as are drugs. If there are similarities between a controlled treatment trial and a diagnostic method trial, there are also many differences relating to the sample size, the choice of criteria for final judgment, the study design and the clinician's behaviour when faced with the problem. These differences make it difficult to organise controlled trials of diagnostic techniques. A different approach using simulation methods and a decision tree appears more appropriate in the evaluation of diagnostic techniques.

Clinical Laboratory Techniques↗

PubMed2006

The choice is yours? How women with ovarian cancer make sense of treatment choices.

OBJECTIVE: Much has been made of the need for cancer patients to be involved in choices about their treatments. We explore the different approaches to involvement described by women with ovarian cancer and consider why being invited to make a choice can sometimes seem inappropriate and untimely. METHOD: Qualitative interviews were conducted in the UK with women with ovarian cancer. Interviews were audio tape recorded and transcribed for qualitative analysis. The interviews were collected as part of a broader study of experiences of ovarian cancer as part of the DIPEx (personal experiences of health and illness) project which runs a website featuring further analyses and video and audio clips from the interviews. RESULTS: Women did not always recall being involved in decisions -some felt there had been no 'real' decisions to make or said they preferred their medical team to decide on their behalf. Other women described asking questions and seeking second opinions but still 'going along with' their doctor's recommendation. A few women (including some of those who had felt unable to participate in decisions soon after their diagnosis) said that they had learnt enough to take control or make at least some of their own treatment decisions. The manner in which options were offered to women sometimes led to confusion and concern, especially if women felt the doctor was unwilling to express his or her own preference. Some worried that not accepting the doctor's advice would prejudice their future care. CONCLUSION: Patients and doctors are often uncertain how best to share in decisions about treatments. Being asked about their preferences can surprise or shock women. Clinicians need to explain about clinical uncertainty and how individual values and preferences may relate to treatment decisions. Presenting the rationale for choice can be difficult and even when well presented, women can be left feeling ill prepared, panicky and trying to second guess what they think the doctor 'really' wanted them to do. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: When patients are invited to make choices their clinicians need to explain about clinical uncertainty and how individual values and preferences may relate to treatment decisions. The options should be communicated in a clear manner, differences in opinion should be acknowledged and the doctor's own preference stated. Patients need to be encouraged and supported to make their decision-whether or not it reflects their doctor's preference. Patients should also be reassured that whichever decision they make their subsequent care and relationship with their medical team will not be adversely affected.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Why some health policies don't make sense at the bedside.

Cost-effectiveness analysis and other forms of decision analysis are becoming more common in the medical literature and are increasingly influential in the development of health policy. Nevertheless, many clinicians find it difficult to apply policies developed from these analyses to individual encounters with patients. We examine the assumptions behind these analyses and argue that the perspective they embody can make clinical strategies appear to be less risky in theory than they are at the bedside. We believe that this problem underlies the intuitive concern many physicians have about policy analyses and calls into question the value of these analyses in shaping clinical practice. These analyses aggregate the benefits and burdens of alternative interventions across different individual persons. Thus, overall population risk appears blunted, as it would in a diversified portfolio of stocks that react differently to financial forces or in a herd of cattle that react differently to veterinary interventions. The assumptions behind these analyses make sense if aggregate outcome is what matters, but not if one cares about each individual investment or animal. Because such aggregation tends to understate individual risk, when applied to human health policy, it may misrepresent the interests of patients and cannot be assumed to provide useful guidelines for decision making at the bedside.

Cost-Benefit Analysis↗

PubMed1981

Counseling families who have a child with a severe congenital anomaly.

The birth of an infant with a major congenital malformation is experienced by the family as a calamity. Parents have an urgent need for compassionate and skilled attention, and a long-term need for counseling to help them adapt to the crisis. The difficult ethical and legal implications of such cases further complicate the doctor's ability to care for the patient and family. Potential conflicts of interest have recently led to the use of voluntary consultation by hospital committees, or obligatory involvement by the courts.

Conflict, Psychological↗

PubMed1998

Improving the appropriateness of physician prescribing.

Appropriate prescribing means that prescribers should try to maximize effectiveness, minimize risks and costs, and respect patients' choices. Evidence from studies on prescribing to individuals and from administrative databases reveals a significant level of inappropriate prescribing by Canadian physicians. Two important reasons for inappropriate prescribing seem to be physicians' level of knowledge and physicians' practice settings. A large number of methods have been tried to improve prescribing behavior, but most are unsuccessful. Academic detailing, and audit and feedback, have both been shown to work but may be difficult to implement in Canada, where most physicians practice in solo fee-for-service settings. Alternative forms of physician payment such as capitation or salary are probably necessary to make prescribing more appropriate.

Canada↗

PubMed1985

Ethical and legal issues in the treatment of incompetent religious.

Medical technology has created dilemmas for those who make decisions regarding whether to prolong life in the face of severe, irreversible illness. Two questions usually arise: who should decide, and what standards should the decision makers use? These questions can be particularly difficult for members of religious institutes. The basic legal standard for such decisions is the patient's autonomy or self-determination; the patient's wishes are paramount. If the patient has been determined incompetent, a person who has the patient's best interests at heart should make the treatment decisions. Sometimes it may be necessary for the court to appoint a conservator. In California a recent law enables a person to create a Durable Power of Attorney--that is, to designate someone to make all health care decisions if the designator becomes incompetent. The surrogate can base decisions on either of two basic legal standards: substituted judgment or best interests. The substituted-judgment standard holds that the decision should be the one that the patient would have made if competent. The decision should be based on any available information about the patient's values and preferences. If these are not sufficiently known, the decision maker may have to resort to the best-interest standard, evaluating all options to determine what is "best" for the patient. In the case of a religious who becomes incompetent and has no family members, the physician probably will accept a member of the institute as a surrogate. If the incompetent religious has family, they and the institute should discuss who should be responsible for communicating with medical personnel. In California, a competent member of an institute should designate a surrogate in advance to avoid any confusion or conflict later.

Catholicism↗