BACKGROUND Most sub-Saharan African countries struggle to make safe surgery accessible to rural populations due to a shortage of qualified surgeons and the unlikelihood of retaining them in district hospitals. In 2002, Zambia introduced a new cadre of non-physician clinicians (NPCs), medical licentiates (MLs), trained initially to the level of a higher diploma and from 2013 up to a BSc degree. ...

South Africa made a decision in 2002 to develop so-called mid-level medical workers, now known as clinical associates. This article describes the background to this decision, and the national process of developing the profession and its scope of practice, which was aligned with the needs of the health service, particularly those of rural district hospitals. A common national curriculum was then...

BACKGROUND Much has been written about the patient-centred approach in doctor-patient consultations. Little is known about interactions and communication processes regarding healthcare providers' and patients' perspectives on expectations and experiences of diagnostic imaging investigations within the medical encounter. Patients journey through the health system from the point of referral to th...

The German Research Network On Schizophrenia (GRNS) is a nationwide network currently comprising 16 psychiatric university departments and 14 state and district hospitals, as well as six local networks of psychiatric practices and general practitioners collaborating on about 25 interrelated, multicenter projects on schizophrenia research. The GRNS aims to intensify collaboration and knowledge e...

In this study we explored the most important topics of acculturation experiences among Iranian refugees in the Netherlands, using the Self-Confrontation Method (Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 1995). We discussed the Dialogical Self Theory reffering to the multiple selves of people who have to deal with different cultures. Ewing (1990) and Hermans and Kempen (1993) argued that a person could have con...

STUDY QUESTION Do differences in heritable genetic factors explain some of the difference in age at natural menopause (ANM) among populations? SUMMARY ANSWER One single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-ANM association (rs16991615) detected in European women was replicated in Iranian women. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Genetics plays an important role in ANM, and well-powered genome-wide association s...

Background: Medication dosing errors may have grave consequences for neonatal patients. Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) with dosing decision support functionalities has been effective in reducing these errors. However, the adoption rate is low. Physicians' resistance has been identified as a significant barrier. To reduce this resistance, the system should be designed in close collabo...

We present a case report of bupropion-induced diplopia in a 26-year-old woman who suffered from atypical depression. After four weeks of taking bupropion (225 mg per day) she complained of headaches, blurred vision, and diplopia. No neurological and ophthalmologic abnormal signs were found. Her brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance venography (MRV) were normal as well. A...

Localized cell shape change initiates epithelial folding, while neighboring cell invagination determines the final depth of an epithelial fold. The mechanism that controls the extent of invagination remains unknown. During Drosophila gastrulation, a higher number of cells undergo invagination to form the deep posterior dorsal fold, whereas far fewer cells become incorporated into the initially ...

Given a linear isometry A0 : Rn → Rn of finite order on Rn , a general 〈A0〉-invariant closed subset M of Rn is considered with Lipschitz boundary. Under suitable topological restrictions the existence of A0-invariant geodesics of M is proven.