Pain assessment by emergency nurses at triage in the emergency department: A qualitative study.

Aims And Objectives: To investigate the assessment of pain intensity in the specific context of triage.

Background: Acute pain affects most patients admitted to emergency departments, but pain relief in this setting remains insufficient. Evaluation of pain and its treatment at the time of patient triage expedites the administration of analgesia, but may be awkward at this time-pressured moment.

Predictors and reasons for help-seeking behavior among women with urinary incontinence.

Introduction And Hypothesis: The aim of the study was to evaluate the predictors and reasons for help-seeking behavior among women with urinary incontinence (UI) in Germany and Denmark.

Methods: This international postal survey was conducted in 2014. In each country, 4,000 women of at least 18 years of age were randomly selected.

Syndemic vulnerability and the right to health.

Investigators working both in syndemics, a field of applied health research with roots in medical anthropology, and in the field of health and human rights recognise that upstream social, political, and structural determinants contribute more to health inequities than do biological factors or personal choices. Syndemics investigates synergistic, often deleterious interactions among comorbid health conditions, especially under circumstances of structural and political adversity. Health and human rights research draws on international law to argue that all people deserve access not only to health care, but also to the underlying determinants of good health.

Development and validation of the deep brain stimulation impairment scale (DBS-IS).

Background: Bilateral deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) has considerable influence on motor and non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD). While improvements in motor functioning can be easily assessed with general quality of life questionnaires, the measurement of specific STN-DBS-associated impairments often remains insufficient. Hence, we aimed to develop a questionnaire that measures STN-DBS-related impairments.

'Electroshock Therapy' in the Third Reich.

The history of 'electroshock therapy' (now known as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)) in Europe in the Third Reich is still a neglected chapter in medical history. Since Thomas Szasz's 'From the Slaughterhouse to the Madhouse', prejudices have hindered a thorough historical analysis of the introduction and early application of electroshock therapy during the period of National Socialism and the Second World War. Contrary to the assumption of a 'dialectics of healing and killing', the introduction of electroshock therapy in the German Reich and occupied territories was neither especially swift nor radical.

Mercy killing in neurology: The beginnings of neurology on screen (II).

The history of Neurocinema includes neuroethics, and this theme was first used in 2 films released in the 1940s in both Germany and the United States. Ich Klage An (I Accuse) is about "terminal" multiple sclerosis in a young woman and the decision to determine one's own fate. The protagonist anticipates becoming "deaf, blind, and idiotic" and asks her husband to administer a toxic drug dose, which he does.

From forensic toxicology to biological chemistry: Normal arsenic and the hazards of sensitivity during the nineteenth century.

This paper reviews the cultural meanings, social uses and circulations of arsenic in different legal, medical and popular settings. The focus is on nineteenth-century France. In the first section, I review the advent of the Marsh test for arsenic, which is commonly regarded as a milestone in the history of toxicology.

Clinical implications of a gradual dormancy concept in malaria.

Malaria recurrences after an initially successful therapy and malarial fever occurring a long time after infection are well-known problems in malariology. Currently, two distinct types of malaria recurrences are defined: recrudescence and relapse. A recrudescence is thought to originate from circulating Plasmodium blood stages which do not cause fever before a certain level of a microscopically detectable parasitemia is reached.

The relevance of 'mixed anxiety and depression' as a diagnostic category in clinical practice.

According to ICD-10 criteria, mixed anxiety and depressive disorder (MADD) is characterized by co-occurring, subsyndromal symptoms of anxiety and depression, severe enough to justify a psychiatric diagnosis, but neither of which are clearly predominant. MADD appears to be very common, particularly in primary care, although prevalence estimates vary, often depending on the diagnostic criteria applied. It has been associated with similarly pronounced distress, impairment of daily living skills, and reduced health-related quality of life as fully syndromal depression and anxiety.

Subjective perceived outcome of subthalamic deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease one year after surgery.

Objectives: Dissatisfaction with subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) despite motor improvements has been observed in Parkinson's disease (PD). Hence, we compared patient's subjective perceived outcome 12 months after surgery (12mFU) with clinical measures to identify risk factors of dissatisfaction.

Methods: Patients were examined at baseline and 12mFU.

'A Berlin psychiatrist with an American passport': Lothar Kalinowsky, electroconvulsive therapy and international exchange in the mid-twentieth century.

The emigration of Lothar Kalinowsky (1899-1992) might, at first glance, seem to be a history of coincidence and twists of fate, but it is shown to be a truly entangled and intertwined history and story. The international introduction of electroconvulsive therapy was not only closely involved with the political, scientific and economic conditions during World War II, but the story of Kalinowsky's relevance to it emerges from competing stories, told differently in Europe and the USA - and by Kalinowsky himself. Tracing these stories up to the end of the 1960s reveals Kalinowsky as an influential inheritor and patron of Berlin Biological Psychiatry, rather than telling the history of an émigré innovator of international neuropsychiatric research.

The role of nursing team continuity in the treatment of very-low-birth-weight infants: findings from a pilot study.

Aim: To assess the association between nursing team continuity and quality of care.

Background: Research on nurse staffing and its effect on quality of care is investigated to different degrees. However, very few studies have observed whether the continuous deployment of nursing staff is associated with quality of care.

Nikolay Nikolayovich Blokhin (1912-1993): Patriarch of 20th century Russian medicine and surgery.

This paper focuses on the personal and professional life of Nikolay Nikolayevich Blokhin, an outstanding Russian surgeon and highly innovative oncologist. In addition to a highly successful clinical career, he was a member and President of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and Director of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences Institute of Experimental and Clinical Oncology. Although his reputation as a medical and political figure is firmly established within Russian medical history, his achievements in surgery and oncology now merit recognition by an international audience.

Chemistry, microscopy and smell: bloodstains and nineteenth-century legal medicine.

This paper analyses the development of three methods for detecting bloodstains during the first half of the nineteenth-century in France. After dealing with the main problems in detecting bloodstains, the paper describes the chemical tests introduced in the mid-1820s. Then the first uses of the microscope in the detection of bloodstains around 1827 are discussed.

Frédéric Chopin and his neuropsychiatric problems.

Few musicians who suffered from any kind of serious neuropsychiatric problems were able to create works that are still admired today. This new research will show that Frédéric Chopin, who reinvented piano music in the first half of the nineteenth century, was one of those few. He died in Paris aged only 39.

Nobel Prize for Physical Therapy? Rise, Fall, and Revival of Medico-Mechanical Institutes.

This historical vignette explores the considerations of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology or Medicine by vetting the Nobel Prize chances of Dr Gustaf Zander (1835-1920). His way to stardom started 150 years ago when he began mechanizing the passive and active movements that physical therapists manually used to treat diseases. A glance at his machines shows that they parallel surprisingly well what can be found in modern fitness studios.

MS in prose, poems and drama.

Background And Objective: Presentations of MS in fictional literature have not been previously researched. This paper surveys and analyses these portrayals of the disease for the first time.

Material And Methods: Relevant works in English and German were identified by means of keyword searches in online public access catalogues and search engines as well as old-fashioned research.

What a wish to die can mean: reasons, meanings and functions of wishes to die, reported from 30 qualitative case studies of terminally ill cancer patients in palliative care.

Background: Despite research efforts over recent decades to deepen our understanding of why some terminally ill patients express a wish to die (WTD), there is broad consensus that we need more detailed knowledge about the factors that might influence such a wish. The objective of this study is to explore the different possible motivations and explanations of patients who express or experience a WTD.

Methods: Thirty terminally ill cancer patients, their caregivers and relatives; from a hospice, a palliative care ward in the oncology department of a general hospital, and an ambulatory palliative care service; 116 semi-structured qualitative interviews analysed using a complementary grounded theory and interpretive phenomenological analysis approach.

Subjectively perceived personality and mood changes associated with subthalamic stimulation in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Background: Clinical and ethical implications of personality and mood changes in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients treated with subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) are under debate. Although subjectively perceived personality changes are often mentioned by patients and caregivers, few empirical studies concerning these changes exist. Therefore, we analysed subjectively perceived personality and mood changes in STN-DBS PD patients.

Staff and parents are discriminators for outcomes in neonatal intensive care units.

Aim: We investigated the associations between staff work characteristics, parents' experiences and a number of medical outcome measures.

Methods: This explorative multicentre study took place in the neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) of five German university hospitals between 2009 and 2011. We assessed staff work characteristics by surveying 126 NICU nurses and 57 physicians and asked 214 parents about their relationships with staff.