The current trend in healthcare is to actively involve patients in their own treatment; however, in practice, healthcare providers may adhere to paternalistic views, which may not align with ideals related to patient involvement. This tension may become visible when providers talk about service encounters that they experienced as being interactionally troubling. In this empirical qualitative study, we utilize Bamberg's narrative positioning analysis to explore how healthcare providers construct patients' roles in narratives about such troubling exchanges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNarratives about clients' service experiences in healthcare organizations constitute a crucial way for clients to make sense of their illness, its treatment, and their role in the service process. This is important because the client's role has recently changed from that of a passive object of care into an active responsible agent. Utilizing Bamberg's narrative positioning analysis as a method, and 14 thematic interviews of healthcare clients with multiple health-related problems as data, we investigated the expectations of the client's role in their narratives about negative service experiences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: FURIN is a proprotein convertase enzyme that inhibits the proinflammatory function of T cells and myeloid cells. Elevated FURIN expression levels have been reported in immune-mediated diseases, such as primary Sjögren's syndrome. Here, we investigated the levels of FURIN in peripheral blood (PB) and synovial fluid (SF) leucocytes from patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Exp Rheumatol
November 2018
Objectives: The proprotein convertase enzyme FURIN is a critical regulator of the anti-inflammatory TGFβ-1 cytokine and peripheral immune tolerance. In T cells, FURIN is co-regulated with IFN-γ and thus highly expressed in T helper 1 type cells. Previous studies have demonstrated that FURIN is upregulated in inflammatory conditions, including atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is an increasing need for novel biomarkers that enable better diagnostic and prognostic stratification of patients with suspected infection. A proprotein convertase enzyme FURIN is upregulated upon immune cell activation, and it promotes infectivity by cleaving and activating pathogens. In this study, we determined FURIN levels in plasma using ELISA from 537 patients that were admitted to emergency room with suspected infection.
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