Patient Sense of Belonging in the Veterans Health Administration: A Qualitative Study of Appointment Attendance and Patient Engagement.

Background: Health care systems have increasingly focused on patient engagement in efforts to improve patient-centered care. Appointment attendance is an integral component of patient engagement, and missed appointments are an ongoing problem for health care systems. Virtually no studies have examined how the sense of belonging is related to patient engagement within a health care system.

Applying user-centered design in the development of nudges for a pragmatic trial to reduce no-shows among veterans.

Objective: To incorporate user-centered design processes into the refinement of nudges designed to reduce no-shows among healthcare appointments for military veterans in the Veterans Health Administration (VA).

Methods: We developed candidate nudges as brief messages based on four broad concepts in behavioral science. We then conducted iterative waves of multi-stage interviews (N = 27) that included a pile sorting task, a "think-aloud" review of each message, and prototype letter reviews.

Enhancing Usability of Appointment Reminders: Qualitative Interviews of Patients Receiving Care in the Veterans Health Administration.

Background: No-shows are a persistent and costly problem in all healthcare systems. Because forgetting is a common cause of no-shows, appointment reminders are widely used. However, qualitative research examining appointment reminders and how to improve them is lacking.

Social withdrawal in major depressive disorder: a case-control study of hikikomori in japan.

Background: Social withdrawal is a feature of a number of psychiatric disorders including major depressive disorder (MDD), yet research examining social withdrawal as a feature of MDD is rare.

Methods: This was a retrospective case-control study. Participants (N = 67) were recruited through an outpatient clinic at an academic medical center in Japan.