Objective: Various demographic factors, including sex, socioeconomic status, and immigration status, have been linked to disparities in healthcare outcomes. Despite efforts by healthcare providers to address these inequities, interventions are not always effective. The present investigation provides empirical insights from Germany focusing on patients with systemic connective tissue disorders, highlighting the need for evaluated strategies to mitigate healthcare disparities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Over the past four years, medical rehabilitation providers and their staff have developed strategies to adapt to a new reality of care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this qualitative survey was to assess patients' expectations from and perceptions of rehabilitation in times of pandemic. The results can contribute to the development of recommendations on how pandemic-related challenges in rehabilitative care can be overcome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Adequate health literacy is crucial for active participation in health-related decisions. Migrants are one of the population groups that can have more difficulties in finding and using relevant information to make their own decisions. Primary care providers in Germany are the main point of contact for health and disease-related questions and can therefore make an important contribution to strengthening the health literacy of this population group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Parotidectomy can affect facial symmetry. Our study evaluated the symmetry of different facial areas and upper neck after total parotidectomy and filling the area with vascularized fat flap (VFF).
Methods: Facial symmetry was evaluated in eight patients and a control group matched in terms of gender and age, using a three-dimensional (3D) facial scanner.
Background: Scientific research has consistently emphasised the high levels of stress encountered by family caregivers of individuals living with dementia. However, conventional self-help approaches remain underutilised. The 'Diversity-On' study addresses this issue.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges, particularly for vulnerable populations residing in confined settings such as refugee shelters: Physical distancing measures were challenging to implement in shelters due to shared rooms or communal use of kitchens and sanitary facilities, which increased the risk of infections. Meanwhile, individuals' capabilities for individual protection strategies were severely impaired by the structure of the shelters. Consequently, shelters had the duty to develop and implement strategies for the prevention and handling of SARS-CoV-2 infections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMammography can reduce breast cancer incidence and mortality. Studies on the utilization of mammography among migrant and non-migrant women are inconsistent. Many of these studies do not take the heterogeneity of migrants in terms of ethnicity and country of origin into account.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: There is evidence suggesting that climate change, coupled with an increase in the frequency and severity of heatwaves, affects mental health. The aim of this study was to investigate potential associations between high temperature and the utilization of an emergency department (ED) by individuals with psychiatric disorders.
Methods: A retrospective analysis of all psychiatric emergency patients from 2015 to 2022 (N=15478) was conducted and compared with local temperature data.
Family caregivers can be overwhelmed by the care they provide within the family without external support. The development of self-management skills and the associated ability to actively and responsibly manage one's own health or illness situation therefore plays a vital role in the home care of people living with dementia. As part of an individualized intervention for family caregivers of people of Turkish origin with dementia, existing self-management skills were examined through qualitative interviews to gain insight into health literacy and empowerment in caregiving and in interviewees' own practices to maintain their health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Childhood asthma is a highly prevalent chronic disease. A failure to implement patient education programmes may result in increased morbidity, despite the availability of distinct diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Patients with lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to have a higher asthma prevalence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Racism in the healthcare system has become a burgeoning focus in health policy-making and research. Existing research has shown both interpersonal and structural forms of racism limiting access to quality healthcare for racialised healthcare users. Nevertheless, little is known about the specifics of racism in the inpatient sector, specifically hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Medical students' health and resilience have increasingly been the subject of current research in recent years. A variety of interventions are recommended to strengthen resilience or its known or suspected influencing factors, although the literature shows that the evidence on the effectiveness of the interventions is inconsistent. The present study investigated whether gratitude is a direct protective factor for resilience in medical students or whether resilience factors (optimism, self-efficacy, social support) and stress mediate the effects of gratitude on resilience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmigrant nurses' experiences of discrimination by patients and nursing home residents: a narrative review Immigrant nurses are filling the shortage of skilled workers in many countries. Studies suggest that they may face discrimination in their destination countries. This paper aims to provide an overview of the experiences of immigrant nurses with regard to discrimination in their interactions with patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic represented a serious challenge for healthcare systems worldwide. Special psychiatric patients represent a vulnerable group and are particularly affected by lockdown interventions. Knowledge on the possible effects for this group of patients in an emergency physician setting is low.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In emergency departments, patients with mental health conditions are a major concern and make up the third or fourth of the most common diagnosis seen during all consultations. Over the past two decades, there has been a noticeable rise in the number of cases, particularly due to an increase in nonurgent visits for somatic medical issues. The significance of nonurgent visits for psychiatric patients is yet to be determined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Refugees in Germany are often housed in shelters, where their influence on the organization of everyday life is severely limited. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these shelters therefore had a special responsibility to take measures to protect the health of their residents. The aim of this research project was to examine how this task was managed and how the pandemic affected daily life in refugee shelters, with the aim to formulate recommendations for practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Expectations regarding health care including rehabilitation differ depending on age, gender, and also the migration history of the patient population. To meet the diverse expectations, health care needs to be diversity-sensitive, which can have a positive effect on the utilization and outcomes of care. Diversity-sensitive care, however, should take into consideration not only the expectations of diverse patient groups but also the opportunities and challenges offered by diversity of staff.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The diversity of the population is associated with different needs and expectations towards palliative and hospice care. Current approaches available in Germany generally fall short in addressing the role of diversity and intersectionality in this health care setting and healthcare facilities struggle with organizational difficulties and missing information on how to implement corresponding diversity-sensitive measures. The present study aims to develop a hands-on manual that enables providers of hospice and palliative care to implement measures and strategies for diversity-sensitive care, while taking into account the perspective of healthcare users and explicitly including vulnerable and minority patient groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) is a frequently used questionnaire in the field of health and social psychology that aims to explore perceptions of discrimination, especially instances of injustice related to various diversity characteristics. No adaptation to health care staff exists. The present study translates and adapts the EDS to nursing staff in Germany and examines its reliability and factorial validity as well as its measurement equivalence between men and women and different age groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZ Evid Fortbild Qual Gesundhwes
February 2023
Reviewing various care-related data, such as patient satisfaction, can provide valuable information for a health care organization to improve its services. Regular and automatic data collection of internet data can save time and money. This data collection can be performed using web scraping.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The perceived ability to influence an infection with SARS-CoV-2 has an impact on compliance with protective measures. Factors influencing perceived controllability are not yet fully known. The aim of this study was to identify intersectional differences in perceived controllability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFKnown SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) can be detected and differentiated using an RT-PCR-based genotyping approach, which offers quicker time to result, lower cost, higher flexibility, and use of the same laboratory instrumentation for detection of SARS-CoV-2 when compared with whole genome sequencing (WGS). In the current study, we demonstrate how we applied a genotyping approach for identification of all VOCs and that such technique can offer comparable performance to WGS for identification of known SARS-CoV-2 VOCs, including more recent strains, Omicron BA.1 and BA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Psychiatric emergency patients have great relevance in the interdisciplinary emergency department. Emergency physicians in this setting often have to make decisions under time pressure based on incomplete information regarding the patient's further treatment. The aim of this study was to identify possible predictors associated with an increased likelihood of inpatient psychiatric admission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVaccinations are a core element of infection control. Migrants have been reported to have low vaccination rates for many infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Still, determinants of migrants' uptake of COVID-19 vaccinations are not sufficiently clear.
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