In language education, the development of writing capability is an important and challenging teaching objective. Writing performance is related not only with students’ comprehension and expression of texts, but also their experience and perceptions of the contexts. Descriptive article writing is a basic writing activity; the content includes concrete understanding and perceptions of space, time, and contexts. However, in the traditional language teaching activities, there is usually no chance for students to have in‐depth feelings about the contexts of a topic. This usually results in low learning motivation and limited expression during the writing process. Therefore, the present study attempted to adopt spherical video‐based virtual reality (SVVR) to enable students to have in‐depth experience and perceptions and to facilitate their learning effectiveness. Based on this approach, a Chinese writing SVVR learning system was developed and a quasi‐experiment was conducted to compare the effects of the proposed approach and the conventional technology‐supported learning approach in a senior high school writing class. The findings show that the proposed SVVR writing approach could improve students' writing performance in terms of content and appearance as well as their creativity tendency and writing self‐efficacy, while also reducing their cognitive load.
BackgroundLung cancer is the leading cause mortality among all cancers in Taiwan. Although Taiwan offers National Health Insurance (NHI), occasionally, patients refuse treatment. This study examined the patient characteristics and factors associated with lung cancer patients refusing cancer treatment in four months after cancer diagnosed and compared the survival differences between treated and non-treated patients.MethodsThe study included 38584 newly diagnosed lung cancer patients between 2004 and 2008, collected from the Taiwan Cancer Registry, which was linked with NHI research database and Cause of Death data set. Logistic regression was conducted to analyze factors associated with treatment refusal. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to examine the effects of treatment and non-treatment on patient survival and the factors affecting non-treatment patient survival.ResultsAmong the newly diagnosed cancer patients, older adults, or those who had been diagnosed with other catastrophic illnesses, an increased pre-cancer Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) score, and advanced stage cancer exhibited an increased likelihood of refusing treatment. Compared with treated patients, non-treated patients showed an increased mortality risk of 2.09 folds. The 1-year survival rate of treated patients (53.32%) was greater than that of non-treated patients (21.44%). Among the non-treated patients, those who were older, resided in lowly urbanized areas, had other catastrophic illnesses, a CCI score of ≥4, advanced cancer, or had received a diagnosis from a private hospital exhibited an increased mortality risk.ConclusionsDespite Taiwan's NHI system, some lung cancer patients choose not to receive cancer treatment and the mortality rate for non-treated patients is significantly higher than that of patients who undergo treatment. Therefore, to increase the survival rate of cancer patients, treatment refusal should be addressed.
BackgroundMedication adherence is critical for patient treatment. This study involved evaluating how implementing Short Message Service (SMS) reminders affected patient medication adherence and related factors.MethodsWe used a structured questionnaire to survey outpatients at three medical centers. Patients aged 20 years and older who were prescribed more than 7 days of a prescription medication were randomized into SMS intervention or control groups. The intervention group received daily messages reminding them of aspects regarding taking their medication; the control group received no messages. A phone follow-up was performed to assess outcomes after 8 days. Data were collected from 763 participants in the intervention group and 435 participants in the control group.ResultsAfter participants in the intervention group received SMS reminders to take medication or those in the control group received no messages, incidences of delayed doses were decreased by 46.4 and 78.8% for those in the control and intervention groups, respectively. The rate of missed doses was decreased by 90.1% for participants in the intervention group and 61.1% for those in the control group. We applied logistic regression analysis and determined that participants in the intervention group had a 3.2-fold higher probability of having a decrease in delayed doses compared with participants in the control group. Participants in the intervention group also showed a 2.2-fold higher probability of having a decrease in missed doses compared with participants in the control group.ConclusionsUse of SMS significantly affected the rates of taking medicine on schedule. Therefore, daily SMS could be useful for reminding patients to take their medicine on schedule.
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