Who gets a lung transplant? Assessing the psychosocial decision-making process for transplant listing.

In the United States, there is a significant shortage of available donor organs. This requires transplant professionals to hold simultaneous, yet divergent roles as (1) advocates for patients who are in need of a lifesaving transplant, and (2) responsible stewards in the allocation of scarce donor organs. In order to balance these roles, most transplant teams utilize a committee based decision-making process to select suitable candidates for the transplant waiting list.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Under-recognized and responsive to treatment.

Mood or anxiety concerns, when explored, may reveal associated OCD symptoms. Pharmacotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy have proven effective.

"I fired my last doctor for not taking me seriously": collaborating with a difficult medical patient in a multidisciplinary primary care facility.

We present the case of a multidisciplinary primary care assessment of a 32-year-old woman with multiple medical and psychological complaints. Following the collaborative care model, this assessment was conducted by a team consisting of a clinical health psychologist, Dr. J.

Contextualizing SEGUE: Evaluating Residents' Communication Skills Within the Framework of a Structured Medical Interview.

Background: The SEGUE (Set the stage, Elicit information, Give information, Understand the patient's perspective, and End the encounter) Framework is a checklist-style rating scale to facilitate the teaching and assessment of communication skills in medical learners. It has been used for over 15 years, and it is recommended in the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education toolbox of assessment methods for resident training. When it was developed, its ability to provide objective scoring was a substantial improvement over global ratings.

Diagnosis-specific management of somatoform disorders: moving beyond "vague complaints of pain".

Unlabelled: The DSM IV category, somatoform disorders, is composed of disorders that are characterized by symptom amplification-most typically, amplification of pain. Other than this commonality, there is considerable variability among the disorders in terms of etiology, course, comorbidities, and the presence or absence of insight. The heterogeneous nature of the somatoform group has led to calls to remove or radically alter the category in the next DSM revision.