Knowledge Of Specific Diseases Research Articles

Basic Knowledge of Hygiene in Voluntary Disaster Control Using - German Red Cross in the Rhein-Erft District as an Example

Full-time workers in the rescue service are often exposed to a risk of infection. The volunteers of the German disaster control (Katastrophenschutz; KatS) are exposed to a similar risk of infection when they are deployed. The aim of this study was to investigate the hygiene status of the two operational units of the German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz; DRK) in the Rhein-Erft District (Rhein-Erft-Kreis; REK). The 66 volunteers of the two operational units (Einsatzeinheiten; EE) "NRW BM 05" and "NRW BM 02" were assessed by means of a written questionnaire. The results showed that they had good general knowledge of hygiene.There were, however, deficits in the knowledge of specific diseases and some multi-resistant pathogens. In general, perceived risk varied greatly, and was often above 5 on a scale from 1-10, where "1" stands for no perceived risk and "10" for high perceived risk. Thus, there is a certain "concern" about getting an infection in action. Appropriate training courses are needed to optimize this situation in the future.

A guide for researchers seeking training in retrospective data harmonization for population neuroscience studies of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.

Due to needs surrounding rigor and reproducibility, subgroup specific disease knowledge, and questions of external validity, data harmonization is an essential tool in population neuroscience of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Systematic harmonization of data elements is necessary to pool information from heterogeneous samples, and such pooling allows more expansive evaluations of health disparities, more precise effect estimates, and more opportunities to discover effective prevention or treatment strategies. The key goal of this Tutorial in Population Neuroimaging Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy article is to guide researchers in creating a customized population neuroscience of ADRD harmonization training plan to fit their needs or those of their mentees. We provide brief guidance for retrospective data harmonization of multiple data types in this area, including: (1) clinical and demographic, (2) neuropsychological, and (3) neuroimaging data. Core competencies and skills are reviewed, and resources are provided to fill gaps in training as well as data needs. We close with an example study in which harmonization is a critical tool. While several aspects of this tutorial focus specifically on ADRD, the concepts and resources are likely to benefit population neuroscientists working in a range of research areas.

Does YouTube Provide Qualified Patient Education Videos About Atrial Fibrillation?

ObjectivePatients utilize the internet as a pathway to acquire knowledge of specific diseases. However, there are limited oversight and review mechanisms to ensure the authenticity of online information. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of video-based resources used to obtain information about atrial fibrillation (AF).MethodsMultiple AF-specific keywords were used to perform a systematic search of YouTube. Two independent reviewers reviewed the top 50 results of each keyword search. To record data, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) score, modified DISCERN score, AF-specific score (AFSS), and essential score (Escore) were used. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used for intergroup comparisons.ResultsA total of 74 videos that met the inclusion criteria were included in the analysis. In terms of video quality, 68% were poor, 19% were moderate, and 13% were exceptional. Videos submitted by publishers with a medical background were much less popular (p < 0.05) than those submitted by publishers without a medical background. The video quality did not differ among those included in this study.ConclusionsSome videos on YouTube that are of real value are not as popular as those with low-quality content submitted by news agencies/media publishers. Furthermore, videos submitted by those with a medical background do not receive as much attention as others. It is important to acknowledge that video platforms should establish content and quality auditing mechanisms for videos. Furthermore, publishers should ensure that viewers receive accurate and complete knowledge and use more concise and accessible images or animations that are tailored to the audience.

Multimodal reasoning based on knowledge graph embedding for specific diseases.

MotivationKnowledge Graph (KG) is becoming increasingly important in the biomedical field. Deriving new and reliable knowledge from existing knowledge by KG embedding technology is a cutting-edge method. Some add a variety of additional information to aid reasoning, namely multimodal reasoning. However, few works based on the existing biomedical KGs are focused on specific diseases.ResultsThis work develops a construction and multimodal reasoning process of Specific Disease Knowledge Graphs (SDKGs). We construct SDKG-11, a SDKG set including five cancers, six non-cancer diseases, a combined Cancer5 and a combined Diseases11, aiming to discover new reliable knowledge and provide universal pre-trained knowledge for that specific disease field. SDKG-11 is obtained through original triplet extraction, standard entity set construction, entity linking and relation linking. We implement multimodal reasoning by reverse-hyperplane projection for SDKGs based on structure, category and description embeddings. Multimodal reasoning improves pre-existing models on all SDKGs using entity prediction task as the evaluation protocol. We verify the model’s reliability in discovering new knowledge by manually proofreading predicted drug–gene, gene–disease and disease–drug pairs. Using embedding results as initialization parameters for the biomolecular interaction classification, we demonstrate the universality of embedding models.Availability and implementationThe constructed SDKG-11 and the implementation by TensorFlow are available from https://github.com/ZhuChaoY/SDKG-11.Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Does Health Literacy Reinforce Disease Knowledge Gain? A Prospective Observational Study of Hungarian COPD Patients.

We set out to measure the health literacy (HL) of COPD patients using the Short Test of Functional Health Literacy (S-TOFHLA), perception-based screening questions (BHLS), and a specific disease knowledge test (COPD-Q). Our main focus is the relationship between functional HL and patients’ disease-knowledge, which contributes to the clarification of the relationship between the different kinds of HL. In two prospective observational studies, 151 COPD patients (80 males, mean age: 62 ± 9 years) completed a questionnaire containing HL measurements, psychological tests (e.g., the Self-Control and Self-Management Scale), and questions regarding subjective health status. Medical data of the patients from the MedSole system were added. The HL scores of the COPD patients were compared to a representative sample using a t-test. Furthermore, correlations of HL with demographic, psychological, and medical variables were calculated within the patient group. The relations among the different HL measurements were tested by chi-square trials. COPD patients had significantly lower HL, as measured by S-TOFHLA. Younger and higher educated patients possessed higher S-TOFHLA scores. Unlike the demographic variables, general self-management showed significant correlations with both BHLS and with COPD-Q. Out of the medical variables, objective health status was associated with BHLS and COPD-Q. Neither BHLS nor S-TOFHLA had a correlation with COPD-Q, but they correlated with each other. We found S-TOFHLA to be a better tool in the medical context. There is a clear gap between self-perceived/functional HL and the necessary disease knowledge. Rehabilitation care for patients with lower HL was more advantageous.

Impact of COVID-19 on the analytical diagnosing ability of family medicine residents.

This article described the difficulties of family medicine residents regarding diagnostic skill training during the pandemic of COVID-19. Social impact may strongly affect clinical reasoning skills.

Specific Disease Knowledge as Predictor of Susceptibility to Availability Bias in Diagnostic Reasoning: a Randomized Controlled Experiment

BackgroundBias in reasoning rather than knowledge gaps has been identified as the origin of most diagnostic errors. However, the role of knowledge in counteracting bias is unclear.ObjectiveTo examine whether knowledge of discriminating features (findings that discriminate between look-alike diseases) predicts susceptibility to bias.DesignThree-phase randomized experiment. Phase 1 (bias-inducing): Participants were exposed to a set of clinical cases (either hepatitis-IBD or AMI-encephalopathy). Phase 2 (diagnosis): All participants diagnosed the same cases; 4 resembled hepatitis-IBD, 4 AMI-encephalopathy (but all with different diagnoses). Availability bias was expected in the 4 cases similar to those encountered in phase 1. Phase 3 (knowledge evaluation): For each disease, participants decided (max. 2 s) which of 24 findings was associated with the disease. Accuracy of decisions on discriminating features, taken as a measure of knowledge, was expected to predict susceptibility to bias.ParticipantsInternal medicine residents at Erasmus MC, Netherlands.Main MeasuresThe frequency with which higher-knowledge and lower-knowledge physicians gave biased diagnoses based on phase 1 exposure (range 0–4). Time to diagnose was also measured.Key ResultsSixty-two physicians participated. Higher-knowledge physicians yielded to availability bias less often than lower-knowledge physicians (0.35 vs 0.97; p = 0.001; difference, 0.62 [95% CI, 0.28–0.95]). Whereas lower-knowledge physicians tended to make more of these errors on subjected-to-bias than on not-subjected-to-bias cases (p = 0.06; difference, 0.35 [CI, − 0.02–0.73]), higher-knowledge physicians resisted the bias (p = 0.28). Both groups spent more time to diagnose subjected-to-bias than not-subjected-to-bias cases (p = 0.04), without differences between groups.ConclusionsKnowledge of features that discriminate between look-alike diseases reduced susceptibility to bias in a simulated setting. Reflecting further may be required to overcome bias, but succeeding depends on having the appropriate knowledge. Future research should examine whether the findings apply to real practice and to more experienced physicians.

A preliminary study of the first Chinese-translated Ophthalmology book Treatise on Diseases of the Eye in Modern times

Treatise on Diseases of the Eye is the first western medical ophthalmology book published in modern times. This book introduced clinical diagnosis technology, some related equipment, specific disease knowledge and treatment methods of western ophthalmology systematically.Not only its content is valuable; the way of expression is easy to understand for its readers. Compilation of this book has a vital role in treating patients and training students, especially for high incidence areas of eye diseases. It opens a door for Chinese to accept and disseminate western ophthalmology knowledge.

Orphan diseases: impact for anesthesia practice.

Orphan diseases certainly have a challenging impact on anesthesia practice. Low prevalence by definition leads to a profound lack of evidence-based medical knowledge, and anesthetists usually cannot rely on personal experience for handling this unique group of patients. Then again, more than 7000 known orphan diseases are estimated to affect 5% of the general population in total. Therefore, it is imperative to have a universally valid approach to anesthesia for orphan diseases. Patients suffering from orphan diseases will be in need of anesthesia for disease-related diagnostic and therapeutic procedures as well as unrelated elective and emergency surgery and may present themselves on all levels of medical care. Instead of itemizing specifics for each disorder and procedure, we rather present a structured - checklist-like - approach to individually prepare for anesthesia and will highlight the most relevant anesthesiological problems and possible countermeasures. We will discuss a variety of sources of information to gain specific disease knowledge and procedural advice and will close this review by discussing the limitations of anesthesia for orphan diseases. Thanks to fast growing resources of knowledge, well tolerated and patient-oriented anesthesia is possible in spite of the inherent challenges of orphan diseases. We invite anesthetists to adapt, modify and improve our proposed structured approach to orphan anesthesia in the context of their daily practice.

Experiences of nursing students in caring for patients with behaviors suggestive of low health literacy: a qualitative analysis

Background: Health literacy is the ability to obtain, process, and understand health information in order to take appropriate health actions. Low health literacy is associated with poor health knowledge and self-management of chronic disease, inadequate utilization of preventive services, and increased hospital admissions. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing recommends that nursing schools incorporate health literacy into curricula. Little, however, has been reported about what nursing students have learned and done about health literacy in clinical. This study explored undergraduate nursing students’ experiences in caring for patients with low health literacy. Methods: A qualitative content analysis method was used to analyze 59 narratives written by undergraduate nursing students. Results: Three themes were uncovered: sensing low health literacy by behavioral cues, promoting health literacy with multiple strategies, and closing the health information loop with positive and negative feelings. Noncompliance, knowledge deficits, anxiety/concerns, and language barriers were behavioral cues indicating low health literacy, and these cues triggered the students’ information support actions. Students promoted patient understanding and utilization of information by using many interventions: simplifying information, reinforcing information, giving written information, and demonstration/teach-back. Many students felt good about being able to help increase knowledge and self-care skills of their patients. Some were frustrated because they were unable to promote lifestyle modifications of the patients with complicated chronic diseases. Students, however, did not employ standardized tools to assess the health literacy of the patient or the patient’s knowledge of specific diseases, nor did they assess readability of patient education materials or provide patient empowerment interventions to encourage active information-seeking and participation in self-care. Conclusions: Nursing students could identify behavioral cues suggestive of low health literacy and provide solutions to increase the patient’s health literacy. To enhance student practice, nursing curricula, however, can integrate relevant health literacy assessment tools and empowerment interventions.

The Impact of Student Pharmacists at Health Fair Events

To evaluate student pharmacists' impact on health fair participant knowledge of selected disease states and to evaluate the intent of health fair participants with abnormal screening results to seek follow-up care within 1 month of screening. Health fair participants were assessed for changes in their knowledge of specific diseases before and after screenings. Participants' intent to seek health care was assessed through a survey instrument developed using Rosenstock's Health Belief Model. Increases in participant knowledge of hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and body mass index were significant, and 78% of participants with abnormal results intended to contact a provider. Student pharmacists' had a positive impact on health fair participants' disease knowledge and intent to follow up with a provider.

Using special interest sessions to design and implement a fatigue management group for people with multiple sclerosis

Aims and MethodSpecial interest sessions are a means of developing additional clinical interests in higher specialist training. We investigated the educational value of developing a group treatment programme for people with multiple sclerosis as well as its benefits for participants.ResultsFeedback from those attending the groups indicated the programme was rated highly or very highly. There was a trend towards improvement in quality of life measures.Clinical ImplicationsThe group programme provided an excellent opportunity for shared interdisciplinary learning. The use of special interest sessions in psychiatry was important in building relationships with a department without direct psychiatric input and allowed the psychiatric trainee to acquire specific disease knowledge.