Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Self-Disclosure, Gender, And Patient Satisfaction In The Doctor-Patient Relationship, Khadiza Tul Jannat

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

It has been well established that the doctor-patient relationship is integral for providing quality health care and sustaining patient satisfaction. Additionally, research has indicated that doctors' self-disclosure is considered as an essential interpersonal component of relational development. In terms of the doctor-patient interaction, previous research has produced numerous studies investigating the relationship between doctors' communication behaviors and patient satisfaction. Scholars have also explored how communication styles are associated with doctors' gender, and patient satisfaction. However, there is still a gap in the existing research concerning the connections between doctors' self-disclosure, gender, and patient satisfaction in doctor-patient interactions. My qualitative study …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Care Choices A Home-Based Palliative Care Program, Katherine Pouliot

Honors Theses

Background: There is a growing need for home-based palliative care services, especially for seriously ill individuals who want to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations and remain with their regular outside care providers. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of Care Choices, a new in-home palliative care program provided by the Visiting Nurse Services of Northeastern New York and Ellis Medicine, a community healthcare system serving New York’s Capital District. Design: A prospective cohort study tracking patient outcomes over the course of one year. Subjects and setting: One hundred twenty-three patients (49 men, 74 women) with serious illnesses who were new enrollees in Care …

Evaluation Of An In-Home Palliative Care Program's Management Of Pain, Mackenzie Laporte

Honors Theses

With the growing population of chronically ill patients wishing to receive care at home, care providers face unique challenges managing the pain of patients with quickly changing illness trajectories. Treating patients outside of institutionalized settings, where regular monitoring is standard, requires careful symptom management. This project was a retrospective review examining nurses’ documentation of pain for patients enrolled in Care Choices, a new home-based palliative care program coordinated through a visiting nurse service and community hospital. The extent to which nurses documented patients' pain score, site, type and pain goal as well as nursing interventions and plan of care in …

Needs Assessment Of Emergency Department Social Workers In Southwestern Minnesota In Relation To Emergency Department Expansion, Gina Marie Njugunah

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Expansion of a hospital emergency department will affect the role of the emergency department social worker. This research project was conducted to assess the needs, concerns, and strengths of the social workers working in the emergency department of a regional medical center. The study included 13 participants who completed an on-line survey. Results showed that participants were concerned with the increase in patient volume as well as the possible increase in wait time for patients. Participants also expressed how concerns could be addressed. The most common solution was to track information about the cases, including wait times for patients, in …

Bridging Tactics: Parental Support Systems: A Proposal For A Psycho-Educational Parent Group, Emily F. Thompson

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The purpose of this Capstone project is to design and present a new intervention program for increasing supportive services to the parents of clients being served through the infant/early childhood mental health program at CSSM. The goal of this project is to provide CSSM with a culturally-­responsive, theoretically grounded, evidence-­based proposal for the development of a psycho-educational group that includes a clear rationale for why this intervention is needed and how it will help the agency achieve the outcomes of infant/early childhood mental health program.

Survey Of Emergency Department Patients' Perceived Barriers To Accessing Services And Community Resource Utilization, Kelsey Ann Wilke

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The purpose of this project is to describe the patients being served by Avera McKennan’s emergency department (ED) and to explore perceived barriers to accessing services and current community resource utilization in order to prevent further non-emergent visits.

Research Questions: 1) What are the demographic characteristics of emergency department patients that are referred to the emergency department social worker? 2) What are the perceived barriers that emergency department patient’s encounter when trying to access services and community resources?

Stroke Rehabilitation, Length-Of-Stay, And Re-Admission Rates: A Literature Review, Morgen Hagedorn

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Stroke is shown to be a significant U.S. health problem with a profound impact on the nation’s rising healthcare costs (Hall, Levant, & DeFrances, 2012). Longer patient length-of-stay [LOS] and higher re-admission rates have brought consequences to healthcare systems as institutional budgets are unable to reconcile the additional services and the influx of healthcare demands. Through a comprehensive literature review, the author illustrates the general knowledge available on the stroke experience, on stroke care and rehabilitation, and on patient LOS and re-admission rates. The literature review is based on general medical research with a focus on the stroke population. The …

Effects Of Patient Trauma On Hospital Staff Functioning: An Exploratory Study Of Psychological Distress Resulting From Trauma Exposure, Randy Allen Braley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study attempted to determine the relationship between exposure to traumatic experiences of hospitalized children and adolescents and the development of secondary traumatic stress, also known as compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, or burnout in clinical staff working with such patients. Hierarchical regression was used to test the hypotheses that: clinical treatment staff will experience higher levels of psychological distress following exposure to patient trauma and previous lifetime trauma events; clinical treatment staff will experience quality of patient relationships associated with the degree of exposure to patient trauma, previous lifetime or work-related trauma history, and level of supervisor support; clinical …