Publications by authors named "Cals J"

Article Synopsis
  • Radiology reports often use complex jargon that can confuse patients, leading to anxiety and difficulty understanding their health information.
  • This review explores how different formats of radiology reports affect how patients perceive, remember, and act on the information they receive about their health.
  • The findings show that using simpler language, illustrations, and glossaries in radiology reports significantly improves patient understanding and reduces anxiety compared to traditional formats.
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Article Synopsis
  • Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a common reason for women to visit general practitioners (GPs), but current diagnostic methods are inadequate, hindering effective diagnosis and treatment.
  • A cross-sectional internet survey was conducted among Dutch GPs to explore their knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding UTI care, using 15 questions to gather data.
  • Results indicated that many GPs rely on non-specific symptoms for UTI diagnosis and often do not adhere to established guidelines; they expressed a strong need for improved diagnostic tools to support better antibiotic prescribing practices.
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Article Synopsis
  • Urinary symptoms are a common reason for women to seek medical advice, and urinary dipstick tests are key for diagnosing UTIs, though visual readings can be inconsistent.
  • A study compared visual versus automated dipstick interpretations using 302 urine samples and found almost perfect agreement for nitrite and leukocyte esterase, but moderate for erythrocytes, and both methods had similar sensitivity and specificity for predicting bacteriuria.
  • While both methods were effective, automated analysis had potential maintenance issues and occasional measurement errors, despite nearing perfect agreement with visual readings.
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Background: Direct access of patients to their web-based patient portal, including laboratory test results, has become increasingly common. Numeric laboratory results can be challenging to interpret for patients, which may lead to anxiety, confusion, and unnecessary doctor consultations. Laboratory results can be presented in different formats, but there is limited evidence regarding how these presentation formats impact patients' processing of the information.

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Objectives: To define the minimum knowledge required for guideline panel members (healthcare professionals and consumers) involved in developing recommendations about healthcare related testing.

Study Design And Setting: A developmental study with a multistaged approach. We derived a first set of knowledge components from literature and subsequently performed semistructured interviews with 9 experts.

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Introduction: In the Netherlands, most emergency department (ED) patients are referred by a general practitioner (GP) or a hospital specialist. Early risk stratification during telephone referral could allow the physician to assess the severity of the patients' illness in the prehospital setting. We aim to assess the discriminatory value of the acute internal medicine (AIM) physicians' clinical intuition based on telephone referral of ED patients to predict short-term adverse outcomes, and to investigate on which information their predictions are based.

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Objective: Online access to medical records is expected to foster patient empowerment and patient-centred healthcare. However, data on actual experienced effects remain limited. We aimed to examine the development of effects patients perceive from online access.

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Background: There is a paucity of prognostic models for COVID-19 that are usable for in-office patient assessment in general practice (GP).

Objectives: To develop and validate a risk prediction model for hospital admission with readily available predictors.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study linking GP records from 8 COVID-19 centres and 55 general practices in the Netherlands to hospital admission records.

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Background: For most acute conditions, the phase prior to emergency department (ED) arrival is largely unexplored. However, this prehospital phase has proven an important part of the acute care chain (ACC) for specific time-sensitive conditions, such as stroke and myocardial infarction. For patients with undifferentiated complaints, exploration of the prehospital phase of the ACC may also offer a window of opportunity for improvement of care.

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Introduction: Vertigo is a prevalent and burdensome symptom. More than 80% of patients with vertigo are primarily treated by their general practitioner (GP) and are never referred to a medical specialist. Despite this therapeutic responsibility, the GP's diagnostic toolkit has serious limitations.

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Background: Many prediction models have been developed to help identify emergency department (ED) patients at high risk of poor outcome. However, these models often underperform in clinical practice and their actual clinical impact has hardly ever been evaluated. We aim to perform a clinical trial to investigate the clinical impact of a prediction model based on machine learning (ML) technology.

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Importance: Globally, health care systems face challenges in managing health care costs while maintaining access to hospital care, quality of care, and a good work balance for caregivers. Electronic consultations (e-consultations)-defined as asynchronous, consultative communication between family physicians and hospital specialists-may offer advantages to face these challenges.

Objective: To provide a quantitative synthesis of the association of e-consultation with access to hospital care and the avoidance of hospital referrals.

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Introduction: Prediction models for identifying emergency department (ED) patients at high risk of poor outcome are often not externally validated. We aimed to perform a head-to-head comparison of the discriminatory performance of several prediction models in a large cohort of ED patients.

Methods: In this retrospective study, we selected prediction models that aim to predict poor outcome and we included adult medical ED patients.

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Digital interdisciplinary consultation is an asynchronous form of consultation in which the general practitioner (GP) can consult a medical specialist. We provide an overview of the various platforms available in the Netherlands and we performed a literature review on the effect on referrals, patient satisfaction and satisfaction of the GP and medical specialist. Until October 2022, we traced nine different platforms that enable digital interdisciplinary consultation between the GP and medical specialist in the Netherlands.

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Background: Patient online access to medical records is assumed to facilitate patient empowerment and advance patient-centered health care. However, to date, the actual effects of online access to medical records perceived by patients and other outcomes are insufficiently empirically tested.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the effects of online access to medical records on patient empowerment, informed decision-making, and the patient-provider relationship perceived by patients.

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This commentary discusses the prevalence and causes of anemia in primary care in the Netherlands and the role of laboratory diagnostics in determining the cause of anemia. There are indications that guidelines in primary care regarding anemia are insufficiently followed; there are also indications that the correct laboratory measurements are requested too limited (under-diagnosis). A possible solution lies in the introduction of reflective testing, in which the laboratory specialist has additional diagnostic laboratory tests performed on the basis of the laboratory results and specific characteristics of the patient.

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Background: In recent years, tasks have shifted from specialized hospital care to primary care, leading to both advantages and challenges for general practitioners (GPs). A frequently mentioned tool to face these challenges is e-consultation, a form of asynchronous digital interprofessional communication between GPs and hospital specialists.

Objective: The objective of this study was to gain insight into GPs' and hospital specialists' views and experiences of e-consultation.

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While there are many alternatives to antibiotics for the symptomatic treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs), their application in practice is limited. Among other things, general practitioners (GPs) often feel pressure from patients to prescribe antibiotics. To gain a better understanding of why this happens and where this pressure originates from, we investigated experiences, expectations, motivations, and perspectives of patients with UTIs in general practice.

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Background: Patient online access to medical records is assumed to foster patient empowerment and advance patient-centred healthcare. Since July 2020, patients in the Netherlands have been legally entitled to electronically access their medical record in general practice. Experience from pioneering countries has shown that despite high patient interest, user rates often remain low.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to understand the variety, timing, and long-term effects of persistent COVID-19 symptoms (long COVID) in individuals who experienced different severities of acute COVID-19 infection.
  • Researchers will analyze data from seven cohort studies to determine the prevalence of long COVID symptoms and their impact on health-related quality of life, while also developing a prediction model for future patients.
  • The study involves ongoing follow-up of participants for up to 24 months post-infection, measuring various health outcomes and complications, and is ethically approved and supported by relevant research foundations.
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Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the most common reason for women to consult a general practitioner (GP). While UTIs are self-limiting in half of cases, most women are prescribed antibiotics, often in discordance with established guidelines. Researchers have employed different interventions to improve GPs' prescribing behavior, especially for respiratory infections, but it is uncertain whether these are effective for UTI care.

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Background: Violence against primary care providers (PCPs) has increased during the current pandemic. While some of these violent acts are not defined as terrorist events, they are intentional events with an aim to disrupt, kill, or injure. Despite their pivotal role in health care, little is known about the risk for PCPs as targets of terrorism.

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