Background Although the COVID‐19 pandemic increased social isolation among hospitalised patients given isolation precautions, visitor restrictions and curtailed interactions with healthcare teams, medical students had limited opportunities for involvement in the care of inpatients. Approach We designed a humanistic and narrative medicine intervention to engage medical students in combating social isolation in hospitalised patients during the COVID‐19 pandemic at a tertiary care teaching hospital. In our programme, medical students provided virtual social support to hospitalised patients via phone by providing assistance connecting with family members, having informal conversations and check‐ins and writing up patient life narratives. Evaluation From April 2020 to March 2021, we received 126 referrals of potentially isolated patients from inpatient medical teams. Fifty patients accepted and received our intervention, including 26 who completed life narratives. Feedback was positive, demonstrating benefit to medical students in learning about humanism and connecting with patients through their life stories. In addition, patients and medical teams felt more supported. We share key operational lessons and resources to facilitate the implementation of this intervention elsewhere. Implications Our intervention allows medical students to meaningfully contribute to the care of inpatients, support beleaguered inpatient teams and learn important lessons about humanism in medicine. This educational and patient care intervention holds promise in other settings, including beyond the COVID‐19 pandemic.
OBJECTIVE: ''Add-on''procedures are actively promoted by some fertility clinics as proven means to improve IVF success rates, especially in couples with repeated implantation failure.The aim of this study was to assess the accuracy of information about ''add-ons'' on the internet, considering the conflicting evidence on their effectiveness. DESIGN: A systematic evaluation of fertility clinics websites. We developed a 10-criteria structured questionnaire to evaluate the quality of information on endometrial scratching, assisted hatching, intralipids infusion and PGT-A, available through the internet.MATERIALS AND METHODS: The search and review were performed in January-February 2020 by a single investigator. We included English language websites that presented in the Google.com search engine after typing the following key words: ''endometrial scratching'' (ES), ''intralipid infusions'' (ILI), ''assisted hatching'' (AHA), ''PGT-A'' or "PGS''. As the previously used term ''PGS'' is often still used instead of PGT-A, we searched for both words.RESULTS: 260 unique websites were evaluated. For the procedures listed, almost all the websites belonged to private clinics. Only for AHA (3 clinics), and PGT-A (2 clinics), we also found public institutions that provided information. An accurate description of the ''add-on'' procedures was provided in most cases (78.8%). However, only a minority (12%) of these websites reported on the inconclusive effectiveness of these procedures. The use of PGT-A was most often encouraged (52.8%), compared to ES (23.6%) and AHA (16%). The additional cost of the ''add-on'' procedure was rarely presented (6.9%). Literature references were never provided for ILI and only rarely, 12.7%, for ES, 4.0% for AHA and 5.6% for PGT-A. Date of entry of the information was frequently not reported. None of the websites reported the clinic's pregnancy rates following of the ''add-on'' procedures.CONCLUSIONS: The information about ''add-ons'' available to the public from IVF clinics' websites is often inaccurate. This could perpetuate false myths among patients about the effectiveness of these add-on procedures and raises concern regarding possible commercial bias. It is imperative that IVF clinics' websites better communicate the associated risks and uncertainties of "add-on'' procedures to prospective patients.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.