Self-reported elevated pain levels: A coping strategy used by women undergoing medical abortion procedures.

Purpose: Epidural analgesia alleviates pain during normal labour but women who undergo medical abortion procedures using epidural analgesia continue to express high pain levels. To understand this we assessed if patients undergoing medical abortions, treated with epidural analgesia, use their pain for psychological benefits.

Methods: This study comprised 105 patients over 13 weeks of gestational age diagnosed with foetal abnormalities after selecting a medical abortion procedure using epidural analgesia.

What Makes You Think That You Are a Health Expert? The Effect of Objective Knowledge and Cognitive Structuring on Self-Epistemic Authority.

Self-epistemic authority (SEA) refers to the subjective judgement of the level of expertise and knowledge a person has in a given domain. While it is reasonable to assume that people's perception of SEA reflects their level of objective knowledge in the given domain, there is evidence to show that people are not optimal judges of their own knowledge. Thus, the present study examined the interaction between the participants' trait-like characteristics of need for cognitive closure (NFC) and efficacy to fulfill the need for cognitive closure (EFNC), which affects the use of cognitive structuring, as a source of SEA.

Mood, cognitive structuring and medication adherence.

A study with a placebo was conducted. Healthy university students were given a placebo and were told to make one pill every day for a week. Participants were informed that the medicine improved mood.

The Relationship Between Body Image, Gender, Subjective Norms, and the Decision to Undergo Preventive Mastectomy Among Arab and Jewish BRCA Carriers.

Background: Carriers for a mutation in BRCA1/2 genes have a high, lifelong risk for developing breast cancer. Preventive mastectomy is considered an effective risk reduction surgery. Many factors might affect the decision to undergo preventive mastectomy, including culture, perceived body image after mastectomy and important others opinion.

Cognitive Structuring and Its Cognitive-Motivational Determinants as an Explanatory Framework of the Fear-Then-Relief Social Influence Strategy.

According to the fear-then-relief technique of social influence, people who experience anxiety whose source is abruptly withdrawn usually respond positively to various requests and commands addressed to them. This effect is usually explained by the fact that fear invokes a specific program of action, and that when the source of this emotion is suddenly and unexpectedly removed, the program is no longer operative, but the person has not yet invoked a new program. This specific state of disorientation makes compliance more likely.

Need for Closure Moderates the Break in the Message Effect.

Cutting the message into smaller portions is a common practice in the media. Typically such messages consist of a headline followed by a story elaboration. In a series of studies Dolinski and Kofta (2001) have shown that such a break in the message increases the effect of the information provided in the headline over that of a story which actually contained information inconsistent with that headline.

Lay Evaluation of Financial Experts: The Action Advice Effect and Confirmation Bias.

The goal of this experimental project was to investigate lay peoples' perceptions of epistemic authority (EA) in the field of finance. EA is defined as the extent to which a source of information is treated as evidence for judgments independently of its objective expertise and based on subjective beliefs. Previous research suggested that EA evaluations are biased and that lay people tend to ascribe higher EA to experts who advise action (in the case of medical experts) or confirm clients' expectations (in the case of politicians).

Factors influencing the decision to comply with nurse recommendations to take or avoid influenza vaccination.

Influenza is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Although vaccination is an efficient means of prevention, low rates of vaccination are reported periodically. The study aimed to examine factors affecting acceptance of nurses' recommendations to take or avoid influenza vaccination.

The Effect of Physicians' Treatment Recommendations on Their Epistemic Authority: The Medical Expertise Bias.

This study examines the hypothesis that patients perceive physicians who recommend more active and major treatment as having greater epistemic authority. The hypothesis is based on the assumption that patients expect that their physicians should advocate for an active treatment rather than abstention from treatment. The sample included 631 participants.

Need for closure and heuristic information processing: the moderating role of the ability to achieve the need for closure.

In contrast to the ample research that shows a positive relationship between the need for closure (NFC) and heuristic information processing, this research examines the hypothesis that this relationship is moderated by the ability to achieve closure (AAC), that is, the ability to use information-processing strategies consistent with the level of NFC. Three different operationalizations of heuristic information processing were used: recall of information consistent with the impression (Study 1); pre-decisional information search (Study 2); and stereotypic impression formation (Study 3). The results of the studies showed that there were positive relationships between NFC and heuristic information processing when participants assessed themselves as being able to use cognitive strategies consistent with their level of NFC (high AAC).

Positive mood boosts the expression of a dispositional need for closure.

Three studies (N=539) examined the hypothesis that positive mood increases the degree to which epistemic motivation, i.e., the need for closure (NFC), affects the way in which an individual processes information (heuristic vs.

The relationship between learned resourcefulness and cancer-related fatigue in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Purpose/objectives: To investigate the effect of learned resourcefulness on fatigue symptoms in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) receiving chemotherapy.

Design: Quasi-experimental with repeated measures.

Setting: Two large hospitals in Israel.

The effect of stress on cognitive structuring: a cognitive motivational model.

In this article, we outline a model of the factors involved in the relationship between stress and cognitive structuring. More specifically, we propose that the desire for certainty, the need for cognitive structure, and perceived efficacy at satisfying one's epistemic needs intervene in the effect exerted by stress on cognitive structuring. We further suggest expanding the model to account for aspects of general information processing and to encompass the effect of various trait-like characteristics on the cognitive response to stress.

What makes patients perceive their health care worker as an epistemic authority?

Health care workers' (HCW) perceived epistemic authority (EA) may have an effect on patient decision-making and compliance. The present study investigated the hypotheses that higher EA is attributed to staff perceived to be experts; to physicians rather than nurses; to HCWs who recommend taking a test more than to the ones who make no recommendation. The study was based on a factorial 2 × 2 × 2 within-between subjects design.

Patients' perceptions of physicians' epistemic authority when recommending flu inoculation.

Objective: Patient perception of physician expertise has important implications for adherence to treatment. This study investigates factors that may influence a patient's perception of a physician's knowledge and expertise (i.e.

The relationship between need for closure and memory for schema-related information among younger and older adults.

Two studies were conducted to examine the relationships among need for closure (NFC) and schematic information processing in younger and older adults. The results show increased NFC to be associated with less schematic processing (i.e.

Reactions of staff members and lay people to family presence during resuscitation: the effect of visible bleeding, resuscitation outcome and gender.

Aim: This article is a report on a study conducted to examine the views of healthcare professionals and lay people regarding the effect of family presence during resuscitation on both the staff performing the resuscitation and the relatives who witness it.

Background: Family presence during resuscitation is controversial. Although many professional groups in different countries have recently issued position statements about the practice and have recommended new policy moves, the Israel Ministry of Health has not issued guidelines on the matter.

Nurse or physician: whose recommendation influences the decision to take genetic tests more?

Aim: This paper is a report of a study conducted to explore factors influencing the decision to take genetic carrier testing.

Background: Genetic testing has become a popular means of elucidating the risk of giving birth to a sick/disabled child but what influences prospective parents to take genetic tests or not is unclear.

Methods: The study was based on a factorial 2 x 2 x 2 within-between subjects design.

To take or not to take genetic carrier tests: personal characteristics associated with taking recommended and nonrecommended tests.

Aims: Genetic testing has become a routine part of prenatal care, the test being offered according to ethnic origin. However, not all clients take the offered tests while others take unnecessary tests. The present study aimed at examining the effects of risk perception, hypochondria, trait anxiety, and attitudes to genetic testing on the uptake of genetic carrier tests.

The experience of uncertainty among patients having peritoneal dialysis.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study conducted to examine factors (severity and duration of the disease, credible authority, social support, education) that may influence the level of uncertainty and stress in patients having peritoneal dialysis.

Background: Although home peritoneal dialysis improves the patient's quality of life, it has both physiological and psychosocial disadvantages. These disadvantages, along with the experience of chronic disease (end-stage renal disease), create strong feelings of stress and uncertainty.

The effect of preoperative uncertainty and anxiety on short-term recovery after elective arthroplasty.

Aims And Objectives: This study examined the effect of preoperative anxiety and uncertainty on short-term physical and mental recovery after elective arthroplasty.

Background: Uncertainty and anxiety accompany all medical procedures. Although preoperative uncertainty plays a central role in the development of stress, only a few studies explicitly examine this issue in terms of its impact on postoperative recovery.

Effect of stress on information processing in the dental implant surgery setting.

Objectives: Dental implantation is a stressful experience, both physically and psychologically. The effect of anxiety on the patient's ability to process relevant information prior to a stressful clinical situation (implant insertion) was evaluated.

Materials And Methods: The study included 98 healthy patients, scheduled for implant insertion.

Whose informational needs are considered? A comparison between cancer patients and their spouses' perceptions of their own and their partners' knowledge and informational needs.

The present study examines information exchange patterns between 98 married couples in Israel where one is a cancer patient and the other is the main caregiver. Specifically, the accuracy of each spouse's perception of the extent of knowledge and the need to receive more disease-related information is examined as a function of the role (patient-caregiver) and gender of the participants. The results showed that women, regardless of their role, were inaccurate in their perception of their husbands' knowledge and motivation to know more.

Reactions of staff members to the relocation of a psychiatric department to a new building.

This study, which was conducted in Israel, examined staff members' reactions to the relocation of three closed psychiatric wards to a new building. Participants' (N=61) levels of uncertainty were significantly higher before the relocation than they were after the relocation. In addition, a significant positive correlation was found between anxiety levels before the relocation and anxiety levels after the relocation.

Effect of unrealistic optimism, perceived control over disease, and experience with female cancer on behavioral intentions of Israeli women to undergo screening tests.

Early detection of cancer can lower mortality rates. Detection tests are available for some cancers such as breast and cervical cancer. Unrealistic optimism can affect compliance with health recommendations.