What Are "Nonphysician Obligations" Anyway? A Survey Study Exploring Their Impact on Anesthesiology Resident Education and Developing a Conceptual Framework.

Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education defines "nonphysician obligations" as "duties performed by nursing and allied health professionals, transport services, or clerical staff." How anesthesiology trainees understand the concept of "nonphysician obligations" and are impacted by these obligations is incompletely understood. The objective of the study was to identify how anesthesiology trainees define "nonphysician obligations," which obligations impact trainee education, and what attitudes trainees hold.

Building compressed causal models of the world.

A given causal system can be represented in a variety of ways. How do agents determine which variables to include in their causal representations, and at what level of granularity? Using techniques from Bayesian networks, information theory, and decision theory, we develop a formal theory according to which causal representations reflect a trade-off between compression and informativeness, where the optimal trade-off depends on the decision-theoretic value of information for a given agent in a given context. This theory predicts that, all else being equal, agents prefer causal models that are as compressed as possible.

Systematic decision frameworks for the socially responsible use of precision medicine.

Deep learning techniques and whole-genome sequencing promise to increase well-being but also risk perpetuating psychological essentialism, potentially justifying inequality. In this Comment, we offer two much-needed systematic frameworks for clinicians and researchers to avoid essentialist inferences and unfair treatment: (1) a data-driven method for detecting causal fairness in precision health and (2) an ethical framework for determining when it is morally permissible to use racial classifications in population health research.

The Year in Electrophysiology: Selected Highlights From 2023.

This special article is a continuation of an annual series for the Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia, highlighting the latest developments in the field of electrophysiology, particularly concerning cardiac anesthesiologists. The selected topics in the specialty for 2023 include consensus statements on left atrial appendage closure, outcomes in patients with atrial fibrillation and heart failure after ablation, further developments in the field of pulse field ablation, alternate defibrillation strategies for refractory ventricular fibrillation, updates on conduction system pacing, new devices such as the Aurora EV system and AVEIR leadless pacemaker system, artificial intelligence and its use in electrocardiogram-based diagnosis and latest evidence regarding the impact of anesthetic techniques on patient outcomes undergoing electrophysiology procedures.

Faculty as Teachers: Career Development for the Clinician-Educator.

Clinician-Educators are the primary faculty in academic anesthesiology departments. These individuals assist with the departmental mission of clinical care and of education. Despite the critical role of the clinician-educator, academic advancement for these individuals has been difficult with the criteria for promotion continuing to evolve.

Tell me your (cognitive) budget, and I'll tell you what you value.

Consider the following two (hypothetical) generic causal claims: "Living in a neighborhood with many families with children increases purchases of bicycles" and "living in an affluent neighborhood with many families with children increases purchases of bicycles." These claims not only differ in what they suggest about how bicycle ownership is distributed across different neighborhoods (i.e.

Best shot: A motivational interviewing approach to address vaccine hesitancy in pediatric outpatient settings.

Background: Vaccine hesitancy in parents and childhood vaccine refusal is increasing. A standard of care to address this problem has not been identified.

Purpose: To identify if the use of motivational interviewing by pediatric providers during routine well child visits, when compared to standard of care, would increase vaccine rates in children 0-12 months of age.

Are TOPF and WRAT WR Interchangeable Measures among Psychiatric Inpatients?

Objective: To examine whether Test of Premorbid Functioning (TOPF) and Wide Range Achievement Test-Word Reading subtest (WRAT WR) are interchangeable measures, and the relationship between these measures and intelligence, among patients with schizophrenia.

Method: In this archival study, the authors examined neuropsychology referrals of an inpatient forensic state hospital. Patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD) who received the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition or the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence-Second Edition and either TOPF or WRAT WR were considered for inclusion.

Development and testing of the aerial porter exoskeleton.

Back pain is one of the largest drivers of workplace injury and lost productivity in industries around the world. Back injuries were one of the leading reasons in resulting in days away from work at 38.5% across all occupations, increasing for manual laborers to 43%.

Let's lower the floor: Clinical utility of the D-KEFS TMT with a forensic psychiatric inpatient population.

Trail-making tests are widely used as part of neuropsychological assessments, although the prevalence of processing speed deficits in schizophrenia spectrum disorders may limit their utility when administered to this population. In response, our study sought to explore D-KEFS TMT performance among a forensic-oriented schizophrenia spectrum sample, with the goal of generating normative data to enhance the utility of the TMT with this population. Archival data was collected from a sample of patients admitted to a forensic maximum-security psychiatric facility.

The use of performance validity tests among inpatient forensic monolingual Spanish-speakers.

Performance validity tests (PVTs) are an integral part of neuropsychological assessments. Yet no studies have examined how Spanish-speaking forensic inpatients perform on PVTs, making it difficult to interpret these tests in this population. The present study examined archival data collected from monolingual Spanish-speaking forensic inpatients ( = 55; = 49.

The Clinical Utility of the NAB Judgment Subtest Among Individuals Diagnosed With Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder Within a Forensic Inpatient Setting.

Executive functioning (EF) has been identified as a significant predictor in determining competence to stand trial. Individuals deemed incompetent to stand trial are provided a limited time frame before conservatorship is considered, thus, treatment providers practicing within inpatient facilities have a responsibility to efficiently identify factors that may lead to prolonged hospitalizations, in order to avoid delays in a defendant's legal proceedings. Although previous studies have demonstrated the utility of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) Total Index Score in predicting length of stay (LOS), the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB) Judgment subtest provides a measure of executive function, which is a domain not captured by the RBANS.

Curie's principle and causal graphs.

Curie's Principle says that any symmetry property of a cause must be found in its effect. In this article, I consider Curie's Principle from the point of view of graphical causal models, and demonstrate that, under one definition of a symmetry transformation, the causal modeling framework does not require anything like Curie's Principle to be true. On another definition of a symmetry transformation, the graphical causal modeling formalism does imply a version of Curie's Principle.

Video Visits: Family Physician Experiences With Uptake During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background And Objectives: With the emergence of COVID-19, telemedicine use has increased dramatically as clinicians and patients have looked for alternatives to face-to-face care. Prior research has shown high levels of patient satisfaction and comparable quality of care. Video visits have been hypothesized to be one way to reduce burnout among clinicians, but there has been minimal research on physician views of virtual care.

"He Would Take My Shoes and All the Baby's Warm Winter Gear so We Couldn't Leave": Barriers to Safety and Recovery Experienced by a Sample of Vermont Women With Partner Violence and Opioid Use Disorder Experiences.

Purpose: This qualitative study explored themes about barriers to substance use treatment for women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) and opioid use in rural Vermont. The goal was to collect descriptive information to aid in the development of intervention ideas to facilitate better treatment access for women in this situation.

Methods: One-on-one telephone interviews with 33 rural Vermont women who experienced both IPV and opioid use took place between February and August 2019.

Decision making of forensic psychiatric inpatients deemed incompetent to stand trial.

This study examined decision making and its correlates among forensic psychiatric inpatients deemed incompetent to stand trial (IST). This study utilized archival data ( = 41;  = 44.27,  = 15.

Reasonable Accommodations for Meeting the Unique Needs of Defendants with Intellectual Disability.

The Americans with Disabilities Act has allowed for greater participation of individuals with disabilities across a variety of contexts, most notably in employment settings. Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) are still precluded, however, from full participation in other contexts, and they are often relegated to the forensic arena without sufficient support, including after being adjudicated incompetent to stand trial (IST). Frequently, individuals who are adjudicated IST due to ID are committed to inpatient psychiatric hospitals that are unable to meet their unique needs.

The Resistance to Change-Beliefs Scale: Validation of a New Measure of Conservative Ideology.

The motivated social cognition (MSC) model of conservative ideology posits there are two core facets of conservative political ideology-endorsement of hierarchies and resistance to change. The present research tested the validity and reliability of a scale developed to measure resistance to change. Five studies support the validity, reliability, and factor structure of the Resistance to Change-Beliefs (RC-B) scale.

A Follow-Up Clinical Trial Evaluating the Consumer-Decides Service Delivery Model.

Objectives There were 2 main objectives. The primary objective was to replicate a prior clinical trial of a consumer-decides (CD) approach to selecting hearing aids in older adults as a potential model for over-the-counter (OTC) intervention using less front-end screening of participants and a wider range of frequency-gain characteristics in the devices. The 2nd objective, only feasible if participant choices allowed, was to evaluate the efficacy of the CD approach relative to a CD-based placebo device.

Clinical Effectiveness of an At-Home Auditory Training Program: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Objectives: To investigate the effectiveness of an at-home frequent-word auditory training procedure for use with older adults with impaired hearing wearing their own hearing aids.

Design: Prospective, double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial with three parallel branches: an intervention group who received the at-home auditory training; an active control group who listened to audiobooks using a similar platform at home (placebo intervention); and a passive control group who wore hearing aids and returned for outcomes, but received no intervention. Outcome measures were obtained after a 5-week period.

The Acoustic Environments in Which Older Adults Wear Their Hearing Aids: Insights From Datalogging Sound Environment Classification.

Purpose: This report presents data on the acoustic environments in which older adults with age-related hearing loss wear their hearing aids.

Method: This is an observational study providing descriptive data from 2 primary datasets: (a) 128 older adults wearing hearing aids for an average of 6 weeks and (b) 65 older adults wearing hearing aids for an average of 13 months. Acoustic environments were automatically and continuously classified about every 4 s, using the hearing aids' signal processing, into 1 of 7 acoustic environment categories.