Medical noncompliance -- or failure to follow the doctor's orders -- is estimated to increase healthcare costs in the US by $100 billion per year. Patients sometimes opt not to take medicines, for instance, because the side effects are unbearable or the dosing regimens are too complicated. But medical noncompliance may also stem from sheer inertia -- the tendency to stay in the current state, even when that state is undesirable.
Culture
The remains of two large 6000-year-old halls, each buried within a prehistoric burial mound, have been discovered by archaeologists from The University of Manchester and Herefordshire Council -- in a UK first.
The sensational finds on Dorstone Hill, near Peterchurch in Herefordshire, were thought to be constructed between 4000 and 3600 BC.
Some of the burnt wood discovered at the site shows the character of the building's structure above ground level -- in another UK first.
Most ward nurses say they are forced to ration care, and not do or complete certain aspects of it—including adequate monitoring of patients—because they don't have enough time, indicates research published online in BMJ Quality & Safety.
The lower the nurse headcount, the greater the risk, the study shows, prompting the researchers to suggest that hospitals could use episodes of missed care as an early warning sign that nurse staffing levels are too low to provide safe, high quality care.
A screening tool used in general hospitals to detect suicide risk among patients who have self harmed should be ditched, concludes a study published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.
The technique (SADPERSONS Scale) fails to pick up most of those who require admission to a psychiatric unit, community psychiatric aftercare, or to determine those at risk of self harming again, say the researchers.
A systematic review of the evidence suggests that screening asymptomatic high-risk adults at risk for lung cancer using low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) may reduce mortality. Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the United States and is the leading cause of cancer-related death for both men and women.
Management of back pain appears to be variable, despite numerous published clinical guidelines, according to a report published by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
Spinal symptoms are among the most common reasons patients visit a physician and more than 10 percent of visits to primary care physicians relate to back and neck pain, the authors write in the study background.
Healthcare professionals are urged to counsel heart and stroke patients on how to resume a healthy sex life, according to a joint statement published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation and the European Heart Journal. It is the first scientific statement to offer detailed guidance for patients.
Cuba has been a forbidden fruit to U.S. citizens since the Communist dictatorship overthrow that happened in 1959. Recently, 14 earth scientists from the U.S.-based Association for Women Geoscientists traveled there to explore its geology and, being academics, predictably gush about its culture, not realizing the people there won't be able to read what they write, since computers for non-elites are forbidden.
Philadelphia, Pa.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Workers who are loyal to their employers tend to be paid more, according to the first broad-scale study of worker loyalty and earnings.
Michigan State University researchers surveyed 10,800 employees in former socialist countries that introduced capitalist economies in the 1990s. While previous research has found that worker loyalty bolsters companies' bottom lines by lowering labor turnover costs and enhanced customer service, this study shows that employees benefit as well – by making more money, said Susan Linz, lead author and professor of economics.
New research from The Center for Injury Research and Prevention at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), signals that emergency and outpatient healthcare providers may need to prepare for higher demand for treatment among younger patients with mild and moderate injuries. As federal and state policies encouraging people to be covered by health insurance go into effect, researchers estimate the potential for more than 730,000 additional medically attended injuries annually, or a 6.1 percent increase if all currently uninsured children and young adults (ages 0-26) become insured.
A new study, conducted by David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, shows that, even as life expectancy has increased over the past two decades, people have become increasingly healthier later in life.
How harmful we perceive an act to be depends on whether we see the act as intentional, reveals new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The new research shows that people significantly overestimate the monetary cost of intentional harm, even when they are given a financial incentive to be accurate.
Irvine, Calif. — Aiming to quell heated national debate about gun control with factual answers, two UC Irvine mathematicians have designed parameters to measure how to best prevent both one-on-one killings and mass shootings in the United States. Their paper appears Friday in the journal PLOS ONE.
NEW YORK, NY -- Patients who receive a drug-eluting stent (DES) and demonstrate high platelet reactivity on clopidogrel are more likely to have blood clots form on the stent and to suffer a heart attack; however, these patients are less likely to develop bleeding complications. One-year results of the ADAPT-DES trial will be published online July 26, 2013, in The Lancet. The findings were first presented at last year's Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) annual scientific symposium.