Publications by authors named "Pamela D Witt"

Importance: The psychological symptoms associated with having a family member admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) during the COVID-19 pandemic are not well defined.

Objective: To examine the prevalence of symptoms of stress-related disorders, primarily posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in family members of patients admitted to the ICU with COVID-19 approximately 90 days after admission.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective, multisite, mixed-methods observational cohort study assessed 330 family members of patients admitted to the ICU (except in New York City, which had a random sample of 25% of all admitted patients per month) between February 1 and July 31, 2020, at 8 academic-affiliated and 4 community-based hospitals in 5 US states.

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Objective: The goal of this study was to understand flight clinicians' learning needs and attitudes with regard to a prehospital ultrasound curriculum.

Methods: In this convergent mixed methods study, 21 prehospital clinicians completed a questionnaire, and 20 attended a 1-hour focus group to explore attitudes regarding learning ultrasound. These participants were from a single emergency medical service agency.

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Communication Quality Analysis (CQA) is a rigorous transcript-based coding method for assessing clinical communication quality. We compared the resource-intensive transcript-based version with a streamlined real-time version of the method with respect to feasibility, validity, reliability, and association with traditional measures of communication quality. Simulated conversations between 108 trainees and 12 standardized patients were assessed by 7 coders using the two versions of CQA (transcript and real-time).

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Background: Underserved and minority populations are often reluctant to engage in advance care planning and/or research often due to distrust in healthcare and/or research institutions.

Aim: To determine if use of a community-based delivery model can facilitate recruitment of individuals from underserved communities in research about advance care planning.

Design: Recruitment data are presented from a prospective, mixed methods observational cohort study that examined the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a community-based delivery model involving an end-of-life conversation game to motivate participants to complete advance care planning behaviors.

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Background: African Americans have low engagement in advance care planning (ACP). This has been attributed to healthcare distrust and skepticism about ACP. A better understanding of these attitudes is needed to address health disparities related to end-of-life care.

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Retrospective studies suggest 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will experience sexual abuse before 18 years of age, resulting in future morbidity. Successful interventions exist, however, victims are reluctant to disclose. Screening for childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may provide an opportunity to overcome this barrier, yet no current model for universal CSA screening exists.

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