Objective: To determine individual and group patient ideas and priorities regarding ways to enhance their own health care while providing a supportive environment including a clinical lipidologist and other medical experts. The intent was to transform these ideas and priorities into hypotheses for future research while enhancing current health…

Objectives: The humanities, including narrative arts, are a valuable tool to foster reflection for professionally competent clinical practice. Integrating such study into traditional medical school curricula can prove challenging. A preclinical elective on opera and medicine was developed and piloted at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown…

This is a case-study based on a micro-ethnography analyzing a doctor-patient interaction in an emergency room (ER) in New York City. Drawing on the framework of narrative medicine (Charon, 2006), the study examines how a phenomenological approach to listening to the patient facilitated the patient's narrative orientation not only to relevant…

This study examined physicians' attitude, involvement, and perceived barriers with the health care proxy. A cross sectional, correlational design was used to survey practicing physicians (N = 70). Physicians had positive attitudes toward the health care proxy and indicated that the most significant barriers to health care proxy completion were…

Medical students at Mount Sinai School of Medicine participated in an intervention designed to promote knowledge and improved communication skills related to cadaveric organ donation. The intervention required students to interact with a standardized patient for approximately 10 minutes and respond to questions posed about organ donation in a…

Although the trajectory of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has changed dramatically over the past 25 years, addressing the psychosocial needs of patients living with HIV/AIDS remains vital. Ensuring the effective delivery of services demands that interventions be rooted in cultural competence and aimed at vulnerable populations. This article describes a…

Appellate courts in Georgia and New York have ruled on exculpatory clauses incorporated into dental school clinic agreements with patients. The decisions represent a radical departure from the traditional view that the clinic is a training ground where patients are living models for practicing health provider skills. (MSE)

National guidelines define asthma control as the prevention of asthma symptoms rather than the treatment of asthma exacerbations. We hypothesized that we would find a discrepancy between what parents consider adequate control compared to what health care professionals mean by "control." Data from a telephone survey conducted for the…

The report investigates the medical background and circumstances surrounding the death of a severely retarded adult male who was a resident of a community developmental center in New York State. It illustrates the complex medical, legal, and ethical issues involved in medical decision making on behalf of persons unable to provide informed consent.…