Chronic pain conditions are the top reason patients seek care, the most common reason for disability and addiction, and the biggest driver of healthcare costs; their treatment costs more than cancer, heart disease, dementia, and diabetes care. The personal impact in terms of suffering, disability, depression, suicide, and other problems is incalculable. There has been much effort to prevent many medical and dental conditions, but little effort has been directed toward preventing chronic pain. To address this deficit, a massive open online course (MOOC) was developed for students and healthcare professionals. “Preventing Chronic Pain: A Human Systems Approach” was offered by the University of Minnesota through the online platform Coursera. The first offering of this free open course was in the spring of 2014 and had 23 650 participants; 53% were patients or consumers interested in pain. This article describes the course concepts in preventing chronic pain, the analytic data from course participants, and postcourse evaluation forms.

BackgroundSurgical and procedural patient care settings require efficient patient flow. The primary goal of this study was to assess use and efficiency of language services for our limited English proficiency (LEP) patients undergoing surgical and outpatient procedures.MethodsPatient language services needs were recorded from our operating room and procedural locations over a two and a half month period in 2016. Time from in-person interpreter request to arrival was recorded. Frequency of language service modality used and reason for telephone and professional video remote interpreting (VRI) rather than in person professional services was queried.ResultsMean time from in-person interpreter request until arrival was 19 min. Variation was high. No cases were cancelled due to lack of available interpretive services and no LEP patient underwent a procedure without requested interpretative service assistance.ConclusionsTime for in person professional interpreter assistance was short but highly variable. Access to telephone interpretive services and VRI services ensured assistance when in person interpreters were immediately unavailable.With the numbers of LEP patients increasing over time along with any new mandates for providing language assistance, the stress on hospital patient service units and the financial implications for many health care facilities will likely continue as challenges.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract