Unintended patient harm is a major contributor to poor outcomes for surgical patients and often r... more Unintended patient harm is a major contributor to poor outcomes for surgical patients and often reflects failures in teamwork. To address this we developed a Multidisciplinary Operating Room Simulation (MORSim) intervention to improve teamwork in the operating room (OR) and piloted it with 20 OR teams in two of the 20 District Health Boards in New Zealand prior to national implementation. In this study, we describe the experience of those exposed to the intervention, challenges to implementing changes in clinical practice and suggestions for successful implementation of the programme at a regional or national level. We undertook semi-structured interviews of a stratified random sample of MORSim participants 3-6 months after they attended the course. We explored their experiences of changes in clinical practice following MORSim. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using a general inductive approach to develop themes into which interview data were coded. Interviews cont...
Objectives. Manipulations of the setting and instructions were tested for effects on language use... more Objectives. Manipulations of the setting and instructions were tested for effects on language use and reported health following expressive writing (EW).
Medical illness and positive life change: Can crisis lead to personal transformation?, 2000
ABSTRACT One important factor that seems to influence the types of positive effects reported from... more ABSTRACT One important factor that seems to influence the types of positive effects reported from illness is the way patients view the demands of their illness. This chapter highlights the important role played by patients' perceptions of illness in affecting positive changes following the diagnosis of a major illness. Much of this work draws from self-regulation theory, developed by Howard Leventhal and others, which highlights the important role of patients' understanding and conceptualization of their illness in directing personal coping with health threats. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The diagnosis of cancer forces considerable psychological adjustment and emotional upheaval on pa... more The diagnosis of cancer forces considerable psychological adjustment and emotional upheaval on patients. Many patients find the expression of negative emotions difficult or have little access to a supportive social support network. In this chapter, we review recent evidence on whether the emotional writing paradigm developed by Pennebaker and colleagues can improve psychological and health outcomes in cancer patients. The
Objective: Drawings have recently been used with patients with heart problems to assess their per... more Objective: Drawings have recently been used with patients with heart problems to assess their perceptions of their illness. This study aimed to investigate whether drawings could be a useful way to assess headache patients' perceptions of their headaches and their reactions. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 65 university students who experienced persistent headaches were asked to draw a picture of how their headaches usually affected them. Drawings were assessed in three ways: they were categorized based on content; their size was measured; and image analysis software assessed their darkness. Associations between drawings, illness perceptions, mood, and health outcomes were assessed. Results: Twenty-seven people drew an external force to the head and these people had greater ratings of average pain and were more likely to attribute their headache to stress. Darker drawings were associated with greater emotional distress and lower vitality. Larger drawing size was associated with perceptions of worse consequences, worse symptoms, worse emotional representations, lower vitality, higher pain, and more days of restricted activity, lower happiness, and higher sadness. Conclusion: Drawings offer an additional way to assess peoples' experience of their headaches and reflect illness perceptions and distress. People draw how they see themselves experiencing their headache and often include expressions and reactions. The inclusion of force to the head, darker drawings, and larger drawings are associated with worse perceptions of the headache and higher pain. Drawings may be a useful way for clinicians to understand patients' experience of pain.
Objectives. Adjuvant endocrine therapy for early-stage breast cancer has greatly reduced the morb... more Objectives. Adjuvant endocrine therapy for early-stage breast cancer has greatly reduced the morbidity and mortality associated with breast cancer recurrence. Despite this, a significant proportion of women report fears of cancer recurrence. This study examined the associations between fear of cancer recurrence (FoR) and illness perceptions, medication beliefs, and treatment side effects in women taking adjuvant endocrine therapy following breast cancer.
Objectives. Manipulations of the setting and instructions were tested for effects on language use... more Objectives. Manipulations of the setting and instructions were tested for effects on language use and reported health following expressive writing (EW).
AIMS: Communication failures in healthcare are frequent and linked to adverse events and treatmen... more AIMS: Communication failures in healthcare are frequent and linked to adverse events and treatment errors. Simulation-based team training has been proposed to address this. We aimed to explore the feasibility of a simulation-based course for all members of the operating room (OR) team, and to evaluate its effectiveness.
Unintended patient harm is a major contributor to poor outcomes for surgical patients and often r... more Unintended patient harm is a major contributor to poor outcomes for surgical patients and often reflects failures in teamwork. To address this we developed a Multidisciplinary Operating Room Simulation (MORSim) intervention to improve teamwork in the operating room (OR) and piloted it with 20 OR teams in two of the 20 District Health Boards in New Zealand prior to national implementation. In this study, we describe the experience of those exposed to the intervention, challenges to implementing changes in clinical practice and suggestions for successful implementation of the programme at a regional or national level. We undertook semi-structured interviews of a stratified random sample of MORSim participants 3-6 months after they attended the course. We explored their experiences of changes in clinical practice following MORSim. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using a general inductive approach to develop themes into which interview data were coded. Interviews cont...
Objectives. Manipulations of the setting and instructions were tested for effects on language use... more Objectives. Manipulations of the setting and instructions were tested for effects on language use and reported health following expressive writing (EW).
Medical illness and positive life change: Can crisis lead to personal transformation?, 2000
ABSTRACT One important factor that seems to influence the types of positive effects reported from... more ABSTRACT One important factor that seems to influence the types of positive effects reported from illness is the way patients view the demands of their illness. This chapter highlights the important role played by patients' perceptions of illness in affecting positive changes following the diagnosis of a major illness. Much of this work draws from self-regulation theory, developed by Howard Leventhal and others, which highlights the important role of patients' understanding and conceptualization of their illness in directing personal coping with health threats. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The diagnosis of cancer forces considerable psychological adjustment and emotional upheaval on pa... more The diagnosis of cancer forces considerable psychological adjustment and emotional upheaval on patients. Many patients find the expression of negative emotions difficult or have little access to a supportive social support network. In this chapter, we review recent evidence on whether the emotional writing paradigm developed by Pennebaker and colleagues can improve psychological and health outcomes in cancer patients. The
Objective: Drawings have recently been used with patients with heart problems to assess their per... more Objective: Drawings have recently been used with patients with heart problems to assess their perceptions of their illness. This study aimed to investigate whether drawings could be a useful way to assess headache patients' perceptions of their headaches and their reactions. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 65 university students who experienced persistent headaches were asked to draw a picture of how their headaches usually affected them. Drawings were assessed in three ways: they were categorized based on content; their size was measured; and image analysis software assessed their darkness. Associations between drawings, illness perceptions, mood, and health outcomes were assessed. Results: Twenty-seven people drew an external force to the head and these people had greater ratings of average pain and were more likely to attribute their headache to stress. Darker drawings were associated with greater emotional distress and lower vitality. Larger drawing size was associated with perceptions of worse consequences, worse symptoms, worse emotional representations, lower vitality, higher pain, and more days of restricted activity, lower happiness, and higher sadness. Conclusion: Drawings offer an additional way to assess peoples' experience of their headaches and reflect illness perceptions and distress. People draw how they see themselves experiencing their headache and often include expressions and reactions. The inclusion of force to the head, darker drawings, and larger drawings are associated with worse perceptions of the headache and higher pain. Drawings may be a useful way for clinicians to understand patients' experience of pain.
Objectives. Adjuvant endocrine therapy for early-stage breast cancer has greatly reduced the morb... more Objectives. Adjuvant endocrine therapy for early-stage breast cancer has greatly reduced the morbidity and mortality associated with breast cancer recurrence. Despite this, a significant proportion of women report fears of cancer recurrence. This study examined the associations between fear of cancer recurrence (FoR) and illness perceptions, medication beliefs, and treatment side effects in women taking adjuvant endocrine therapy following breast cancer.
Objectives. Manipulations of the setting and instructions were tested for effects on language use... more Objectives. Manipulations of the setting and instructions were tested for effects on language use and reported health following expressive writing (EW).
AIMS: Communication failures in healthcare are frequent and linked to adverse events and treatmen... more AIMS: Communication failures in healthcare are frequent and linked to adverse events and treatment errors. Simulation-based team training has been proposed to address this. We aimed to explore the feasibility of a simulation-based course for all members of the operating room (OR) team, and to evaluate its effectiveness.
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