Toward a Conceptual Model of Affective Predictions in Palliative Care.

Context: Being diagnosed with cancer often forces patients and families to make difficult medical decisions. How patients think they and others will feel in the future, termed affective predictions, may influence these decisions. These affective predictions are often biased, which may contribute to suboptimal care outcomes by influencing decisions related to palliative care and advance care planning.

Trajectories of Current and Predicted Satisfaction With One's Life Following a Cancer Diagnosis.

Background: Poor physical and mental health is common among cancer survivors, but little is known about how cancer influences life satisfaction and expectations about one's future, both of which may subsequently influence health decisions and outcomes.

Purpose: The current study examined how a cancer diagnosis influences current and predicted future life satisfaction in seven domains, including family, finances, work, and health.

Methods: We leveraged data from three waves of the Midlife in the United States study (N = 6,389) and examined the relation between new and past cancer diagnoses on satisfaction using generalized estimating equations.

Interventions to Engage Affective Forecasting in Health-Related Decision Making: A Meta-Analysis.

Background: People often use affective forecasts, or predictions about how a decision will make them feel, to guide medical and health decision making. However, these forecasts are susceptible to biases and inaccuracies that can have consequential effects on decision making and health.

Purpose: A meta-analysis was performed to determine the effectiveness of intervening to address affective forecasting as a means of helping patients make better health-related choices.

US Consumers' Understanding of Nutrition Labels in 2013: The Importance of Health Literacy.

Introduction: We examined US adults' understanding of a Nutrition Facts panel (NFP), which requires health literacy (ie, prose, document, and quantitative literacy skills), and the association between label understanding and dietary behavior.

Methods: Data were from the Health Information National Trends Survey, a nationally representative survey of health information seeking among US adults (N = 3,185) conducted from September 6, 2013, through December 30, 2013. Participants viewed an ice cream nutrition label and answered 4 questions that tested their ability to apply basic arithmetic and understanding of percentages to interpret the label.

Decision making and cancer.

We review decision making along the cancer continuum in the contemporary context of informed and shared decision making in which patients are encouraged to take a more active role in their health care. We discuss challenges to achieving informed and shared decision making, including cognitive limitations and emotional factors, but argue that understanding the mechanisms of decision making offers hope for improving decision support. Theoretical approaches to decision making that explain cognition, emotion, and their interaction are described, including classical psychophysical approaches, dual-process approaches that focus on conflicts between emotion versus cognition (or reason), and modern integrative approaches such as fuzzy-trace theory.

Precancer risk perceptions predict postcancer subjective well-being.

Objective: The present study used longitudinal data to explore whether subjective well-being in cancer survivors was related to predisease judgments of their likelihood of getting cancer.

Method: Subjective well-being was assessed in terms of affective well-being (frequency of positive and negative affective states) and satisfaction with one's life overall. The sample consisted of 158 participants in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the U.

Just blowing smoke? Social desirability and reporting of intentions to quit smoking.

Introduction: Do cigarette smokers really want to quit smoking or do they simply say they do in order to placate others and avoid criticism? In surveys of smokers, stated quit intentions and reports of quit attempts may be biased by social desirability concerns. This makes it difficult to interpret large-scale state and national surveys of smoking behavior that collect data through telephone and face-to-face interviews, methods that tend to evoke high levels of socially desirable responding.

Methods: The 2007 Health Information National Trends Survey used a dual-frame design to query smokers' quit intentions and past quit attempts in 1 of 2 ways: A self-administered mail survey (low pressure for socially desirable responding; n = 563), or an interviewer-administered telephone survey (high pressure for socially desirable responding; n = 499).

New approaches to understand cognitive changes associated with chemotherapy for non-central nervous system tumors.

Context: Researchers have described a constellation of cognitive deficits (e.g., impairments in executive functions, working memory, attention, and information-processing speed) associated with cancer treatment, and specifically chemotherapy, for non-central nervous system tumors.

Exploring objective and subjective numeracy at a population level: findings from the 2007 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS).

Numeracy is a critical component of decision making in health, and low numeracy may adversely affect risk comprehension, medical treatment, and health outcomes. Health researchers have developed objective and subjective measures of numeracy that potentially could be used for clinical or health research purposes. To examine the association between objective and subjective numeracy at a population level, data were obtained from the 2007 Health Information National Trends Survey, a health communication survey that collects data from a nationally representative sample of the U.

How numeracy influences risk comprehension and medical decision making.

We review the growing literature on health numeracy, the ability to understand and use numerical information, and its relation to cognition, health behaviors, and medical outcomes. Despite the surfeit of health information from commercial and noncommercial sources, national and international surveys show that many people lack basic numerical skills that are essential to maintain their health and make informed medical decisions. Low numeracy distorts perceptions of risks and benefits of screening, reduces medication compliance, impedes access to treatments, impairs risk communication (limiting prevention efforts among the most vulnerable), and, based on the scant research conducted on outcomes, appears to adversely affect medical outcomes.

Are patient decision aids the best way to improve clinical decision making? Report of the IPDAS Symposium.

This article reports on the International Patient Decision Aid Standards Symposium held in 2006 at the annual meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The symposium featured a debate regarding the proposition that "decision aids are the best way to improve clinical decision making.'' The formal debate addressed the theoretical problem of the appropriate gold standard for an improved decision, efficacy of decision aids, and prospects for implementation.

Rethinking the objectives of decision aids: a call for conceptual clarity.

Health decision aids are a potentially valuable adjunct to patient-physician communication and decision making. Although the overarching goal of decision aids--to help patients make informed, preference-sensitive choices--is widely accepted, experts do not agree on the means to achieve this end. In this article, the authors critically examine the theoretical basis and appropriateness of 2 widely accepted criteria used to evaluate decision aids: values clarification and reduction of decisional conflict.

The uterine sandwich for persistent uterine atony: combining the B-Lynch compression suture and an intrauterine Bakri balloon.

Objective: The objective of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a combination of surgical interventions for control of postpartum hemorrhage.

Study Design: At cesarean delivery, patients with persistent bleeding from uterine atony after the administration of oxytonics were treated with the placement of a B-Lynch suture. When the B-Lynch failed, subsequent placement of an intrauterine Bakri balloon followed.