Last year I attended the inaugural Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference (PODC) in Boston, Massachusetts, US. A scientist by nature, I soaked up the evidence on the threat of overdiagnosis in its many forms and met famous doctors and researchers. I got home and told the local clinical leaders all about it and we are using what I have learned to shape local practice. Great. This year my experience...

Introduction: Digital technologies are increasingly being used to assist older people to live more independently and better lives. The rapid increase in ageing population requires and enforces the development of adaptive technological products and services to improve the quality of life for the elderly. ICT has a huge impact on healthcare from both perspectives of delivering and providing acces...

Emergence of the issue of adolescent-to-adult HIV care transition as a priority in the HIV response has been like an iceberg rising out of the water. In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, it did not even merit a footnote, as the world was too busy watching children die without treatment. After we had a few antiretrovirals – crushed adultsized pills used off-label – things got better, but the...

Self-care programs for depression use educational and cognitive-behavioral techniques (e.g. written information, audiotapes, videotapes, computerized, or group courses) to assist patients in the management of depressive symptoms (Morgan and Jorm, 2008). In the UK, these interventions are recommended as step 1 in a stepped care program for treating depression in primary care (National Institute ...

L imited health literacy, common in patients with diabetes, has been associated with worse diabetes outcomes (1–4). While patients with limited health literacy have worse diabetes knowledge (2–5), knowledge does not necessarily predict outcomes (6–8). Because diabetes requires extensive selfcare, differences in self-management behaviors may be a key contributor to the disparity in outcomes. In ...

The philosophers of antiquity and others through the ages recognized the connection of human emotion and thought with physiological processes and behavior (1). The relatively recent increases in the human life span and the prevalence of significant chronic illnesses have generated a greater appreciation of the relationship between human emotional, social, cognitive, and behavioral processes and...

Over the last 10 years, the world has seen a number of mass casualty disasters. Within that period, the Caribbean has had its own share of such disasters. These include the eruption of the Soufriere Hills volcano, Montserrat, in 1995, the passage of Hurricane Ivan through Grenada, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in September 2004 and floods in Guyana in 2005. The 2005 hurricane season is predict...

objective The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of an online self-care education program supporting early rehabilitation of patients after total laryngectomy (TLPs) and factors associated with satisfaction. methods Health care professionals (HCPs) were invited to participate and to recruit TLPs. TLPs were informed on the self-care education program ‘In Tune without Cords’ (IT...

Quality of life surveys in large observational studies such as DOPPS [1] have contributed significantly to our understanding of the impact of living with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). However, the impact of chronic kidney disease (CKD) on quality of life is less well understood. As the commonest hereditary renal disease, with clinical manifestations ranging from asymptomatic to severe progres...

Ramage-Morin has estimated that 500 000 Canadians aged 12 to 44 years, 38% of seniors in long-term care facilities and 27% of seniors living at home experienced pain on a chronic basis. Worse still, a review of the European literature noted that effective pain control for patients in the primary care setting often eluded health practitioners. Few things in life are as intolerable and incomprehe...