Exploring Expressive Writing with Patients With Chronic Pain During Primary Care Visits.

Background: Patients living with chronic pain may feel frustrated with and neglected by clinicians who care for them, leading to negative health care experiences. Clinicians may struggle to find new ways to engage and connect with patients experiencing chronic pain. Both patients and clinicians may benefit from expressive writing by potentially improving communication and creating a deeper sense of connection within medical visits.

Better Together: Long-term Behaviors and Perspectives after a Practitioner-Family Writing Intervention in Clinical Practice.

Background: An expressive writing intervention, the Three-minute Mental Makeover (3MMM), was previously associated with reduced stress for practitioners, patients, and families. The goal of this follow-up study was to evaluate long-term use of writing and perspectives after participation in the 3MMM.

Methods: The original study involved patients and families in the neonatal and pediatric Intensive Care Units, inpatient units, and outpatient clinics of a children's hospital.

Health Care Practitioners and Families Writing Together: The Three-Minute Mental Makeover.

Introduction: Expressive writing, the process of self-expression through writing, appears to have beneficial effects. Our hospital's narrative medicine group developed an expressive writing tool, the Three-Minute Mental Makeover (3MMM).

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the 3MMM to reduce stress and optimize communication between health care practitioners and their patients/families.

Inadvertent stenting of patent ductus arteriosus with Amplatzer Vascular Plug.

We report a 12-month old patient who presented for murmur evaluation after percutaneous closure of type C patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) using a 10 mm Amplatzer Vascular Plug (AGA Medical Corporation, Golden Valley, MN) at an outside institution. Echocardiography revealed a large left-to-right shunt through the implanted device, inadvertently stenting the PDA instead of closing it. The patient underwent repeat catheterization with successful coil implantation within the Amplatzer Vascular Plug, completely eliminating the large residual ductal shunt.

Physical fitness of urban American children.

The Bruce treadmill protocol was used to evaluate the exercise endurance in a pediatric urban population. The sample population consisted of 525 healthy children 4 to 18 years of age (303 males and 222 females). Endurance time increased with age in males and increased up to 10 to 12 years of age in females, thereafter leveling off.