During the time spent at medical school, students may be presented with various opportunities to engage in teaching and medical education. Often these opportunities are passed up or indeed overlooked all together. However, the value of developing teaching skills and engaging in such activities for the dissemination, application and translation of medical knowledge is of great importance to the ...

A qualitative survey was carried out in six countries to gather insights into potential barriers to patient participation in cancer clinical trials (CTs) to help stakeholders develop strategies to improve recruitment and participation. While the research was exploratory in nature, the findings highlight the critical role that doctors play in terms of CTs participation. The research also indicat...

In tackling agricultural challenges, policy-makers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have increasingly considered genetically modified (GM) crops as a potential tool to increase productivity and to improve product quality. Yet, as elsewhere in the world, the adoption of GM crops in SSA has been marked by controversy, encompassing not only the potential risks to animal and human health, and to the env...

BACKGROUND It is deemed good practice to involve patients routinely in research but no study has investigated the practical benefits, particularly to successful recruitment. AIMS To identify whether patient involvement is associated with study success. METHOD All studies listed on the Mental Health Research Network (MHRN) portfolio database (n = 374) were interrogated using logistic regress...

BACKGROUND The adherence to treatment with injectable disease-modifying drugs (DMDs) in multiple sclerosis (MS) may benefit from adequate information provision and management of expectations. The communication between patients and physicians is very important in this respect. The current study investigated the perspectives and experiences of the MS patients and neurologists concerning the choic...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether changes in hearing, cognition, depression, and vision affect daily life participation and whether screening tests that identify problems could be used in the home. METHOD Interviewers assessed presence of medical conditions, social class, distance acuity, cognition, hearing, depression, and participation using valid screening tools. Participation scores were sub...

RESULTS: Fifty-five participants (31 patients and 24 parents) completed all questionnaires, 98.2% preferred active involvement in therapeutic decision-making. The SDM-Q-9 scores, assessed by patients and physicians, were acceptable (mean 68 out of 100). However, the independently assessed OPTION-5 scores were significantly lower (mean 31 out of 100). In the consultations, physicians rarely aske...

Some US states have introduced measures to increase voter participation. I develop a formal model of elections to study how these measures affect political outcomes. I find that at high enough levels, measures to increase turnout lead to candidates converging at the median voter’s ideal point, as candidates switch from choosing policies that motivate their partisan base to competing over centri...

This article uses a microsimulation model to estimate how freezing all remaining private-sector and one-third of all public-sector defined benefit (DB) pension plans over the next 5 years would affect retirement incomes of baby boomers. If frozen plans were supplemented with new or enhanced defined contribution (DC) retirement plans, there would be more losers than winners, and average family i...