Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Social Isolation Among Families Caring For Children With Disabilities, Dennis J. Baumgardner

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

In this issue introduction, the editor-in-chief of Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews comments on the social isolation experienced by families that include children with significant disabilities.

Addressing Postpartum Smoking Relapse Among Low-Income Women: A Randomized Control Trial, Kristine Alaniz, Bruce Christiansen, Tingting Sullivan, Lisette Khalil, Michael C. Fiore

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Smoking during pregnancy can have dire consequences for both the baby and mother. Low-income pregnant women smoke at particularly high rates. Among women who quit during pregnancy, postpartum relapse is high. This randomized control trial tested the effect of adding postpartum assistance to an existing smoking cessation program (First Breath) designed for low-income women.

Methods: Of 185 study participants, 94 women were randomly assigned to the standard First Breath program (control) and 91 to an enhanced program. First Breath consisted of evidence-based smoking cessation counseling provided at every prenatal visit. The enhanced program included all First Breath services plus …

Oral Fungal Microbiota: To Thrush And Beyond, Dennis J. Baumgardner

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

The oral microbiota is complex, multikingdom, interactive, and involves extensive biofilm formation. While dominated by bacteria, Candida is a frequent member of this microbiota; however, several other potentially pathogenic fungi (among around 100 identified species) appear to reside in some individuals, including Cryptococcus, Aspergillus, and Fusarium. Oral candidiasis may manifest as a variety of disease entities in normal hosts and in the immunocompromised. These include pseudomembranous candidiasis (thrush), hyperplastic or atrophic (denture) candidiasis, linear gingival erythema, median rhomboid glossitis, and angular cheilitis. The purpose of this review is to describe the oral fungal microbiota (ie, oral mycobiota), …

Factors Influencing Family Burden In Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Encounters, Hannah R. Abrams, Hayden S. Leeds, Heidi V. Russell, Melody B. Hellsten

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Caring for a child with cancer or hematologic disease places unique stress on a family unit. Families’ subjective experience of this care-related burden mediates the relationship between cost and health-related outcomes. While financial costs are well described for families of pediatric hematology/oncology patients, it is unclear how cost and other factors each contribute to families’ overall experience of care-related burden. This study identifies and groups the challenges that families report and describes their association with overall reported burden.

Methods: This mixed-methods analysis of a cross-sectional single-center study was conducted via structured, self-administered questionnaire provided to inpatient and outpatient caregivers …

Is There Less Opioid Abuse In States Where Marijuana Has Been Decriminalized, Either For Medicinal Or Recreational Use? A Clin-Iq, Aaron M. Wendelboe, Richard Mathew, Tana Chongsuwat, Elizabeth Rainwater, Mark A. Wendelboe, Elizabeth Wickersham Md, Ann F. Chou

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Opioid use, abuse, and associated mortality have reached an epidemic level. In some states, cannabis is being used to treat chronic pain. To examine the hypothesis that medical marijuana legislation may reduce adverse opioid-related outcomes if patients substitute cannabis for opioids for pain management, we conducted a clinical inquiry (Clin-IQ). We searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid MEDLINE In-Process, and Embase for studies using the search terms marijuana, cannabis, legal, marijuana smoking, medical marijuana, opioid-related disorders, cannabis use, medical cannabis, legal aspect, and opiate addiction. We included population-based articles published from January 1, 2012, through December 5, 2018, that assessed the relationship …

I Live Alone But Don't Feel Alone: Social Isolation And Loneliness From The Patient Perspective, Julia Bedard-Thomas, Christian Gausvik, Jonathan Wessels, Saundra Regan, Keesha Goodnow, Anna Goroncy

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

A growing homebound population may be at risk for social isolation and loneliness. Health-related social needs play a contributing role in these conditions. Research shows social isolation and loneliness are drivers of health outcomes. This pilot feasibility study seeks to explore patient-centered insight into perceptions of social isolation and loneliness in a homebound population. Eight participants were recruited from a home-based primary care practice within a family medicine residency program. One 30-minute semi-structured interview was completed in participants’ homes. The interview focused on loneliness and social isolation, using the 6-item De Jong Gerveld loneliness scale. Three qualitative analysts open-coded transcriptions …

House Calls Are Reaching The Tipping Point — Now We Need The Workforce, Thomas Cornwell

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Home-based primary care (HBPC) improves the lives of high-cost, frail, homebound patients and their caregivers while reducing costs by keeping patients at home and reducing the use of hospitals and nursing homes. Several forces are behind the resurgence of HBPC, including the rapidly aging population, advancements in portable medical technology, evidence showing the value of HBPC, and improved payments for HBPC. There are 2 million to 4 million patients who could benefit from HBPC, but only 12% are receiving it. The number of these patients is expected to double over the next two decades. This requires a larger and better …

Measuring Patients’ Perceptions Of Health Care Encounters: Examining The Factor Structure Of The Revised Patient Perception Of Patient-Centeredness (Pppc-R) Questionnaire, Bridget L. Ryan, Judith Belle Brown, Paul F. Tremblay, Moira Stewart

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Given the ongoing desire to make health care more patient-centered and growing evidence supporting the provision of patient-centered care, it is important to have valid tools for measuring patient-centered care. The patient-centered clinical method (PCCM) is a conceptual framework for providing patient-centered care. A revision to the PCCM framework led to a corresponding need to enhance the Patient Perception of Patient-Centeredness (PPPC) questionnaire. The original PPPC was aligned with the components of the PCCM conceptual framework and developed to measure patient-centeredness from the patient’s perspective. The purpose of this study was to examine the factor structure of a revised …

Incorporating Home Visits In A Primary Care Residency Clinic: The Patient And Physician Experience, Mary Caitlin St. Clair, Jessica J. F. Kram, Glenda Sundberg

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Home visits, once a popular but now uncommon form of health care delivery, are on the rise. Few studies have focused on the value the experience brings to resident physicians and their patients.

Methods: A 6-month pilot was conducted with 11 residents who participated in 32 home visits with 11 patients. Patient and resident experiences were captured through a survey following the home visits.

Results: In all, 100% of patients and a majority of residents were very interested in being a part of and incorporating future home visits, respectively. Every patient in the survey said that the visits resulted …

Relationship Of Patient Self-Administered Copd Assessment Test To Physician Standard Assessment Of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease In A Family Medicine Residency Training Program, Jessica E. Burchette, Ivy A. Click, Leigh Johnson, S. Alicia Williams, Brett Tyler Morgan

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Assessing the global impact of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) on a patient’s life can be difficult to perform in the clinical setting due to time constraints and workflow challenges. The primary objective of this study was to compare disease impact ratings between patient self-administered COPD Assessment Test (CAT) and physician standard office assessment. This prospective study was conducted at a family medicine residency clinic in northeast Tennessee. The study included two study groups: 1) adult patients seen at the clinic during the 3-month study period with an active diagnosis of COPD, and 2) their physicians. Physicians’ assessment of the …

A Letter To My Departed Niece, * Anonymous *

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

The following piece was written in the weeks following the death of the author’s niece. It is an attempt to explore how we as a society handle health crises differently for medical versus mental health diagnoses.

Suffering In Silence: Is Gastroparesis Underdiagnosed?, Dennis J. Baumgardner

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

In this introduction to Volume 6, Issue 2, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews offers additional comment to the clinical review of diabetic gastroparesis authored by Farmer and colleagues (p. 148), regarding the problem of undiagnosed disease. Increased awareness of this entity and appropriate questioning regarding symptoms of diabetic gastroparesis in the primary care setting may prevent the “suffering in silence” experienced by many patients with this complication.

Variation And Change Over Time In Promis-29 Survey Results Among Primary Care Patients With Type 2 Diabetes, Juell Homco, Kristin Rodriguez, David R. Bardach, Elizabeth A. Hahn, Suzanne Morton, Daren Anderson, David Kendrick, Sarah Hudson Scholle

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: We sought to describe results of patient-reported outcome measures implemented among primary care patients with diabetes and explore factors associated with changes in scores over time.

Methods: Two organizations serving diverse patient populations collected the PROMIS-29 survey at baseline and 3-month follow-up for patients with type 2 diabetes. Bayesian regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between patient characteristics and changes in PROMIS-29 scores. Exploratory analyses assessed relationships between goal-setting and changes in scores.

Results: The study population reported substantially more problems with physical functioning (mean: 42.5 at Site 1 and 38.9 at Site 2) and pain interference …

Team-Based Care And Patient Satisfaction In The Hospital Setting: A Systematic Review, Kristen K. Will, Melissa L. Johnson, Gerri Lamb

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Limited research examining the relationship between team-based models of care and patient satisfaction in the hospital setting is available. The purpose of this literature review was to explore this relationship as well as the relationships between team composition, team-based interventions, patient satisfaction, and other outcomes of care when measured as part of the study.

Methods: A systematic appraisal of research studies published through February 2017 was conducted using PubMed, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Embase, Ovid, gray literature and Google Scholar. Inclusion criteria were 1) experimental (randomized control trials), quasi-experimental, or non-experimental (cross-sectional) study design; 2) team-based care interventions; 3) hospital …

Utilization Of Acupuncture Services In The Emergency Department Setting: A Quality Improvement Study, John R. Burns, Jessica J. F. Kram, Vashir Xiong, Jeanne M. Stark Casadont, Tiffany A. Mullen, Nancy Conway, Dennis J. Baumgardner

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Patients often present to the emergency department (ED) for pain. As opioid fatalities rise, alternative treatments are warranted for pain management. Acupuncture, a nonpharmacological treatment involving the insertion of needles into skin or tissue at specific points within the body, may help to decrease acute pain. Our study aimed to assess the utilization and impact of acupuncture in the ED for acute pain management.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of purposefully collected quality improvement data. Patients who were ≥18 years old and who presented to the ED at an urban medical center in Wisconsin during 2017 were offered …

Medically Tailored Meals As A Prescription For Treatment Of Food-Insecure Type 2 Diabetics, Leslie J. Rabaut

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is an immense burden to the health of our population and to our current health care system, and the weight of this burden is only projected to multiply in coming years. A nutritious diet is an indispensable aspect of diabetes treatment, and the lack of access to food engenders poor disease-state control, which correlates with increased health care utilization. Interventions aimed at improving access to food through medically tailored meals (MTMs) have demonstrated effectiveness in improving the health of food-insecure type 2 diabetic patients and reducing health care costs. Further studies are necessary to increase the …

Diabetic Gastroparesis: Perspectives From A Patient And Health Care Providers, Adam D. Farmer, Caroline E. Bruckner-Holt, Susanne Schwartz, Emma Sadler, Sri Kadirkamanthan

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Gastroparesis is defined as a delay in gastric emptying in the absence of mechanical obstruction in the stomach. Gastroparesis has a number of causes, including postsurgical, secondary to medications, postinfectious, idiopathic, and as a complication of diabetes mellitus, where it is underrecognized. The cardinal symptoms of diabetic gastroparesis are nausea, early satiety, bloating, and vomiting. Diabetic gastroparesis is more common in females and has a cumulative incidence of 5% in type 1 diabetes and 1% in type 2 diabetes. It is associated with a reduction in quality of life and exerts a significant burden on health care resources. The pathophysiology …

Abstracts From The 25th Annual Health Care Systems Research Network Conference, April 8–10, 2019, Portland, Oregon

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

The Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN) is made up of nonprofit health systems with embedded research departments whose scientists are dedicated to public domain research. The network’s annual conference serves as a forum for research teams to disseminate study findings, stimulate new collaborations, and share insights about conducting research in real-world care settings. Abstracts accepted for presentation at HCSRN 2019 are published in this supplement of Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews, the official scientific journal of the conference.

Defining Patient-Oriented Research For The Average Person (And Potential Research Partner), Dennis J. Baumgardner

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

In this introduction to the first issue of 2019, the editor-in-chief of Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews offers additional context to the findings of Kaur and Pluye (p. 7), who methodically formalized an operational definition of patient-oriented research for the purposes of searching bibliographic databases. A possible succinct, lay definition of patient-oriented research for the average “person on the street” is proposed.

Patient Perceptions Of Planned Organ Removal During Hysterectomy, Zeinab Kassem, Chad M. Coleman, Andrew S. Bossick, Wan-Ting Su, Roopina Sangha, Ganesa Wegienka

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Previous reports indicate many women may not have a firm grasp on likely outcomes of different hysterectomy procedures. This study aimed to assess women’s self-reported expectations of how they think their anatomy will change after hysterectomy.

Methods: Women scheduled for hysterectomy at a tertiary care hospital, for non-oncological reasons, reported their planned procedure type and the organs they understood would be removed 2 weeks prior to surgery. Patient reports and electronic medical records were reviewed, and kappa statistics (κ) were calculated to assess agreement for all women and within subgroups.

Results: Most of the 456 study participants (mean age: …

Confidential Care For Adolescents In The U.S. Health Care System, Priya R. Pathak, Adriana Chou

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

In providing care for adolescents, maintaining confidentiality should be considered a human right and an evidence-based component of quality care. Unfortunately, complexities in the U.S. legal and health care systems have created a setting in which confidential care is inaccessible to many adolescent patients. Federal laws provide a minimum standard for confidentiality protections, but variations in state legislation relating to minor consent, special health care services, and confidentiality exemptions create large variability in adolescent confidentiality rights across the country. In certain contexts, such as consensual sexual activity, legal provisions may not align with professional ethical standards in adolescent care. In …

Coordinating An Oncology Precision Medicine Clinic Within An Integrated Health System: Lessons Learned In Year One, Michael A. Thompson, Jennifer J. Godden, Deborah Wham, Antony Ruggeri, Michael P. Mullane, Amanda Wilson, Shamsuddin Virani, Scott M. Weissman, Brenda Ramczyk, Pamela Vanderwall, James L. Weese

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Precision medicine is a term describing strategies to promote health and prevent and treat disease based on an individual’s genetic, molecular, and lifestyle characteristics. Oncology precision medicine (OPM) is a cancer treatment approach targeting cancer-specific genetic and molecular alterations. Implementation of an OPM clinical program optimally involves the support and collaboration of multiple departments, including administration, medical oncology, pathology, interventional radiology, genetics, research, and informatics. In this review, we briefly introduce the published evidence regarding OPM’s potential effect on patient outcomes and discuss what we have learned over the first year of operating an OPM program within an integrated health …