Some differences between social work, spiritual care, and psychology: Content variance in end-of-life conversations.

Objectives: Within the multidisciplinary team, there can sometimes be lack of clarity as to the specific different contributions of each of the psycho-social-spiritual professionals: social workers, psychologist, and spiritual caregivers. This study examined the content of their end-of-life conversations with patients.

Methods: A total of 180 patients with terminal cancer received standard multidisciplinary care, including conversations with a social worker, psychologist, and spiritual caregiver.

Associations Between Psycho-Social-Spiritual Interventions, Fewer Aggressive End-of-Life Measures, and Increased Time After Final Oncologic Treatment.

Background: Little is known about the impact of spiritual caregivers, psychologists, and social workers on desired end-of-life (EoL) medical outcomes, such as reduced use of aggressive care in the final 2 weeks of life, having more time between the last active oncological treatment and death, and increased hospice use.

Patients And Methods: We conducted a prospective study of 180 patients with cancer and their families, their interactions with social work, psychology, and spiritual care, and the above three treatment outcomes.

Results: We found that having one or more spiritual care visits (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 2.

New rapid and simple methods for detection of bacteria and determination of their antibiotic susceptibility by using phage mutants.

Three new methods applying a novel approach for rapid and simple detection of specific bacteria, based on plaque formation as the end point of the phage lytic cycle, are described. Different procedures were designed to ensure that the resulting plaques were derived only from infected target bacteria ("infectious centers"). (i) A pair of amber mutants that cannot form plaques at concentrations lower than their reversion rate underwent complementation in the tested bacteria; the number of plaques formed was proportional to the concentration of the bacteria that were coinfected by these phage mutants.