Search

As previous research has observed, medical students and physicians alike confront vast amounts of knowledge in their education and practice, such that no one clinician can know everything there is to know about biomedicine. Even before clerkships, medical students learn to cope with this impossibility by prioritizing certain information based on its perceived utility for exams and clinical practice. Many factors can shape this process, including teamwork, wherein individual medical students rely on one another to address gaps in knowledge at the level of the group. This paper will draw on qualitative data from two allopathic medical schools in the American Midwest to demonstrate that peer-to-peer learning, a widely utilized pedagogical modality in North American medical schools, is amongst the earliest places where future physicians learn how to rely on their peers in the profession as they make choices about what to know and what not to know about biomedicine: cultivating a culture of "intraprofessionalism" between students with different knowledges and values, as they prepare to enter the same profession. The paper will also consider how differences in the student populations at two field sites impact intraprofessional development. Drawing on scholarship of peer-based learning strategies and the sociology and anthropology of medical education, the authors argue that peer-to-peer learning is a key site in the professional socialization of medical students toward the effective management of medical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on 2 years' worth of ethnographic observation of team meetings to explore decision‐making in an NHS clinical genomics service. The focus of discussions was on ambiguous genomic results known as VUS or Variants of Uncertain Significance, which may be pathogenic but which also may turn out to be benign. In examining decision‐making around such results, we note how, in contrast to much policy and promotional material in this area, clinicians in these meetings (clinical geneticists and genetic counsellors) place great emphasis on parental phenotypes and whether the parents of a patient share the symptoms and signs of the suspected condition. This information is then combined with the result of genomic tests to decide whether the variant a patient has is responsible for their condition. This article explores the way in which clinicians attempt to flexibly enrol parents into genomic explanations through informal diagnosis of their possible phenotypes and the way in which actually meeting parents allows some clinicians to trump explanations based on documentary or photographic data. The paper sheds light on the way that earlier scholarly understandings of such decisions (around, say dysmorphology) remain relevant and explores claims that laboratory tests overrule clinical decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential of the perspective of epistemic injustice to reconcile medical sociology's attention to the micro level of experience and interpersonal exchange, and disability studies' focus on the macro level of oppressive structures. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the concept of epistemic injustice and its key instances—testimonial, hermeneutical, and contributory injustice. We also consider previous applications of the concept in the fields of health care and disability, and we contextualise our investigation by discussing key features of postsocialism from the perspective of epistemic injustice. In the second part, we explore specific epistemic injustices experienced by people who use disability support by drawing on interviews and focus groups conducted with parents of disabled children in present‐day Bulgaria. In our conclusion, we revisit our methodological and theoretical points about the potential of epistemic injustice to facilitate mutually beneficial exchanges between medical sociology and disability studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessible Summary: What is already known?: The nurse–patient relationship in mental health care is an important focus of mental health nursing theories and research.There is limited evidence about which factors influence nurse‐sensitive patient outcomes of the nurse–patient relationship. This hinders the development, planning, delivering, and quality assurance of the nurse–patient relationship in nursing practice and nursing education. What this paper adds to existing knowledge?: To our best knowledge, this is the first study to examine associations between nurse‐sensitive patient outcomes of the nurse–patient relationship and a range of patient characteristics and relationship‐contextual factors.In this study, we found that gender, age, hospital characteristics, nurse availability when needed, nurse contact, and nurse stimulation were associated with the scores on the nurse‐sensitive patient outcome scale. What are the implications for practice?: Having insight into the factors associated with nurse‐sensitive patient outcomes of the nurse–patient relationship can help nurses, nursing students, nursing management and also patients to enhance the nurse–patient relationship, trying to influence outcomes of nursing care. Introduction: The lack of evidence on patient characteristics and relational‐contextual factors influencing nurse‐sensitive patient outcomes of a nurse–patient relationship is a possible threat to the quality and education of the nurse–patient relationship. Aim: To measure nurse‐sensitive patient outcomes of the nurse–patient relationship and to explore the associations between nurse‐sensitive patient outcomes and a range of patient characteristics and relational‐contextual factors. Method: In a multicenter cross‐sectional study, 340 inpatients from 30 units in five psychiatric hospitals completed the Mental Health Nurse‐Sensitive Patient Outcome Scale. Descriptive, univariate and Linear Mixed Model analyses were conducted. Results: Overall, patient‐reported outcomes were moderate to good. Female participants, nurse availability when needed, more nurse contact and nurse stimulation were associated with higher outcomes. Age differences were observed for some of the outcomes. Outcomes also varied across hospitals but were not related to the number of times patients were hospitalized or to their current length of stay in the hospital. Discussion: The results may help nurses to become more sensitive and responsive to factors associated with nurse‐sensitive patient outcomes of the nurse–patient relationship. Implications: The nurse‐sensitive results can support nurses in designing future nurse–patient relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identified the 100 most impactful global contributors to religion journals and mapped their respective disciplinary affiliations. To conduct this investigation, we performed a secondary data analysis of a Scopus-derived database featuring the world's leading scientists. The mean contributor published 51.93 papers, had an h-index of 13.57, and an hm-index 11.50. Most contributors were located in the USA with the most common disciplinary affiliations being religion, non-specialized (n = 22), sociology, non-specialized (n = 21), sociology of religion (n = 20), and theology (n = 11). The results reveal that religion discourse is populated by some of the leading scholars in the world. Leveraging their expertise can help advance the field's knowledge development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power dynamics influence every aspect of scientific collaboration. Team power dynamics can be measured by team power level and team power hierarchy. Team power level is conceptualized as the average level of the possession of resources, expertise, or decision‐making authorities of a team. Team power hierarchy represents the vertical differences of the possessions of resources in a team. In Science of Science, few studies have looked at scientific collaboration from the perspective of team power dynamics. This research examines how team power dynamics affect team impact to fill the research gap. In this research, all coauthors of one publication are treated as one team. Team power level and team power hierarchy of one team are measured by the mean and Gini index of career age of coauthors in this team. Team impact is quantified by citations of a paper authored by this team. By analyzing over 7.7 million teams from Science (e.g., Computer Science, Physics), Social Sciences (e.g., Sociology, Library & Information Science), and Arts & Humanities (e.g., Art), we find that flat team structure is associated with higher team impact, especially when teams have high team power level. These findings have been repeated in all five disciplines except Art, and are consistent in various types of teams from Computer Science including teams from industry or academia, teams with different gender groups, teams with geographical contrast, and teams with distinct size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories play an important role in guiding intimate partner homicide (IPH) prevention research and practice. This study is the first systematic review of theories employed to explain why someone might kill their intimate partner. This review used rigorous methods to locate and synthesize literature that described explanatory theories of IPH perpetration. Using set search terms, we systematically searched 15 databases and repositories for theory-focused documents (i.e., theory papers or analyses) published in English from 2003 to 2018. Eighteen documents met these inclusion criteria and identified 22 individual theories that seek to explain why people might kill their intimate partners. These theories fell within four broader theoretical perspectives: feminist, evolutionary, sociological/criminological, and combined. Key tenets and focal populations of these 22 theories were identified and organized into a compendium of explanatory theories of IPH perpetration. Potential strengths and limitations of each of the four perspectives were described. Review findings underscored the likely importance of addressing gender as well as risk and protective factors at all levels of the social ecological model in efforts to understand IPH perpetration. The review findings highlighted the need for both integrated theories and a broader conceptual organizing framework to guide work aimed at IPH perpetration prevention to leverage the strengths of disparate theoretical perspectives. With the goal of informing future research, a preliminary iteration of such a framework is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the problem of estimating the covariance of a collection of vectors using only highly compressed measurements of each vector. An estimator based on back-projections of these compressive samples is proposed and analyzed. A distribution-free analysis shows that by observing just a single linear measurement of each vector, one can consistently estimate the covariance matrix, in both infinity and spectral norm, and this analysis leads to precise rates of convergence in both norms. Through information-theoretic techniques, lower bounds showing that this estimator is minimax-optimal for both infinity and spectral norm estimation problems are established. These results are also specialized to give matching upper and lower bounds for estimating the population covariance of a collection of Gaussian vectors, again in the compressive measurement model. The analysis conducted in this paper shows that the effective sample complexity for this problem is scaled by a factor of $m^{2}/d^{2}$ , where $m$ is the compression dimension and $d$ is the ambient dimension. Applications to subspace learning (principal components analysis) and learning over distributed sensor networks are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a conceptual argument for the sociological analysis of the everyday experiences of disabled people through the example of acquired brain injury (ABI) survivors. Most research concerning ABI has been carried out within a medical framework. This paper adds a new dimension to research concerning ABI, and indeed, to my knowledge, is the first to explore a long-term, interdisciplinary view of both ABI and neurological rehabilitation. This paper sets out how the use of critical sociological theory can provide thorough analyses of disabled people's experiences that are free from the pre-judgement of traditional discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper used an intersectionality-based policy analysis to critically dissect systemic power structures within the UN that likely contributed to marine policy making's stagnation. An empirical analysis of UN organ structure and composition in relation to a state's gross domestic product found inequities in representation and leadership between large and small economies and elucidated how a state's economic status influences its ability to participate in international marine policy processes. Without recognition of these power disparities, upcoming negotiations for a new high seas treaty could perpetuate the marginalization of low-income states disproportionately affected by exploitative marine activities' impacts on human security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicalization is a central topic of concern in the sociology of disability and of health and illness. In this paper, I examine how medicalization is inequitably applied and circulates in the context of schools, specifically in serving students with educational disabilities. My aim is to advance understandings of medicalization through this case. Using a mixed-methods design, I first show, descriptively, how race and gender intersectionally predict educational disability status in a dataset of all Wisconsin public school students. Next, I examine how racial and gender disparities in disability status are produced at the micro level, using interviews with 27 Wisconsin teachers, including in-depth discussions of 73 individual students that were struggling academically or behaviorally. My quantitative findings show variation by race, gender, and disability category: White children have higher probability of special education receipt than comparable children of color for academic difficulties, but lower probability for behavioral difficulties, and girls have lower probability than comparable boys overall. My interview data suggest that these disparate outcomes reflect stratified medicalization processes, in which institutional constraints, status beliefs, and cultural discourses of race and gender shape both stratified noticing of schooling difficulties and stratified interpretation of those difficulties as medicalized conditions. • White children and boys are more likely than comparable peers to receive special education for higher-status disabilities. • Children of color and boys are more likely than comparable peers to receive special education for lower-status disabilities. • These inequalities are explained by stratified definitional processes of medicalization by teachers. • Institutional constraints and cultural discourses of race and gender shape stratified medicalization processes. • These processes include stratified noticing and stratified interpretation of students' difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most recent internationally widespread disease outbreak occurred during the flu season of 2009 and 2010. On April 2009, the first cases of influenza A (H1N1) (Popularly called, Swine Flu) were confirmed in the USA and UK following a novel virus that was first identified in Mexico. As the virus spread rapidly, the risk of morbidity and mortality increased in several countries. In this paper, we rely on the social cognitive theory of risk to assess the willingness of the US public to comply with vaccination and reduce the risk of sickness and death from the flu. We conduct a secondary data analysis of the Pew Research for the People and Press October 2009 and investigate the factors associated with willingness to take the swine flu vaccine (n = 1000). The findings indicate that the decision to take the swine flu vaccination was highly polarized across partisan lines. Controlling for education, income and demographic factors, the likelihood of taking the vaccine was associated with party identification. Individuals that identified themselves as Democrats were more likely to be willing to take the swine vaccine than individuals that identify themselves as Republicans and Independents. Confidence in the ability of the government to deal with the swine flu crisis seems to explain party identification differences in the willingness to take the vaccine. The implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines experiences of living with chronic illness for haemodialysis patients. In order to understand these experiences the paper takes an existential-phenomenological approach. Interviews of seven participants (five males, two females) were collected in a haemodialysis clinic. Based upon the participants experiences three core themes emerged: (1) the challenges of living with chronic renal failure; (2) body changes and embodiment; (3) their illness experience and social relationships. The findings suggest that the illness experience of chronic renal failure is an on-going struggle to attain a sense of control. We suggest that where a sense of control is limited this can create a sense of powerlessness. Further, the illness experience was not solely restricted to the individual, but also affected wider social relationships. It is only through taking into account the context of patients experience of illness that clinicians/nurses can meaningfully draw on all aspects of evidence to reach integrated clinical judgement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies that focus on the effects of both the division of household chores and of financial contributions on the mental health of couples are scarce. This paper expands on previous research by paying attention to the variation of this relationship among three types of households: Male breadwinner, one-and-a-half-earner and dual-earner. Using paired data from the 10th wave of the Panel Study of Belgian Households, collected in 2001, we perform separate linear regressions for men (N = 1054) and women (N = 1054). The results suggest that in one-and-a-half-earner households, women's employment has a negative effect on their partner's depression level and that in dual-earner households, the effect of women's employment is only negative if men are not the major breadwinner. Crossover effects of depression between partners seem to mediate part of the aforementioned associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]