Safety Talk and Safety Culture: Discursive Repertoires as Indicators of Workplace Safety and Health Practice and Readiness to Change.

Background: Small construction businesses (SCBs) account for a disproportionate share of occupational injuries, days lost, and fatalities in the US and other modern economies. Owner/managers of SCBs confront risks associated with their own and workers' safety and business survival, and their occupational safety and health (OSH) related values and practices are key drivers of safety and business outcomes. Given owner/mangers are the key to understanding and affecting change in smaller firms, as well as the pressing need for improved OSH in small firms particularly in construction, there is a critical need to better understand SCB owners' readiness to improve or adopt enhanced OSH activities in their business. Unfortunately, the social expectation to support safety can complicate efforts to evaluate owners' readiness. Objectives: To get a more accurate understanding of the OSH values and practices of SCBs and the factors shaping SCB owners' readiness and intent to implement or improve safety and health programming by comparing their discourse on safety with their self-rated level of stage of change. Methods: In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 SCB owner managers. Respondents were asked to self-rate their safety program activity on a 5-point scale from unaware or ignorant ('haven't thought about it at all') to actively vigilant ('well-functioning safety and health program for at least 6 months'). They were also asked to discuss the role and meaning of OSH within their trade and company, as well as attitudes and inclinations toward improving or enhancing business safety practices. Analysis and results: Respondents' self-rating of safety program activity was compared and contrasted with results from discourse analysis of their safety talk, or verbal descriptions of their safety values and activities. Borrowing from normative and stage theories of safety culture and behavioral change, these sometimes contradictory descriptions were taxonomized along a safety culture continuum and a range of safety cultures and stages of readiness for change were found. These included descriptions of strong safety cultures with intentions for improvement as well as descriptions of safety cultures with more reactive and pathological approaches to OSH, with indications of no intentions for improvement. Some owner/managers rated themselves as having an effective OSH program in place, yet described a dearth of OSH activity and/or value for OSH in their business. Conclusion: Assessing readiness to change is key to improving OSH performance, and more work is needed to effectively assess SCB OSH readiness and thus enable greater adoption of best practices.

Congruence of Patient Self-Rating of Health with Family Physician Ratings.

BACKGROUND: A single self-rated health (SRH) question is associated with health outcomes, but agreement between SRH and physician-rated patient health (PRPH) has been poorly studied. We studied patient and physician reasoning for health ratings and the role played by patient lifestyle and objective health measures in the congruence between SRH and PRPH. METHODS: Surveys of established family medicine patients and their physicians, and medical record review at 4 offices. Patients and physicians rated patient health on a 5-point scale and gave reasons for the rating and suggestions for improving health. Patients' and physicians' reasons for ratings and improvement suggestions were coded into taxonomies developed from the data. Bivariate relationships between the variables and the difference between SRH and PRPH were examined and all single predictors of the difference were entered into a multivariable regression model. RESULTS: Surveys were completed by 506 patients and 33 physicians. SRH and PRPH ratings matched exactly for 38% of the patient-physician dyads. Variables associated with SRH being lower than PRPH were higher patient body mass index (P = .01), seeing the physician previously (P = .04), older age, (P < .001), and a higher comorbidity score (P = .001). Only 25.7% of the dyad reasons for health status rating and 24.1% of needed improvements matched, and these matches were unrelated to SRH/PRPH agreement. Physicians focused on disease in their reasoning for most patients, whereas patients with excellent or very good SRH focused on feeling well. CONCLUSIONS: Patients' and physicians' beliefs about patient health frequently lack agreement, confirming the need for shared decision making with patients.

Undocumented status as a social determinant of occupational safety and health: The workers' perspective.

BACKGROUND: Undocumented immigration to the United States has grown dramatically over the past 25 years. This study explores undocumented status as a social determinant of occupational health by examining its perceived consequences on workplace safety of Latino immigrants. METHODS: Guided by the Theory of Work Adjustment, qualitative analysis was conducted on transcripts from focus groups and individual interviews conducted with a convenience sample of Latino immigrant workers. RESULTS: Participants reported that unauthorized status negatively impacted their safety at work and resulted in a degree of alienation that exceeded the specific proscriptions of the law. Participants overwhelming used a strategy of disengagement to cope with the challenges they face as undocumented immigrants. CONCLUSION: This study describes the complex web of consequences resulting from undocumented status and its impact on occupational health. This study presents a framework connecting the daily work experiences of immigrants, the coping strategy of disengagement, and efforts to minimize the impact of structural violence.

Qualitative Evaluation of Pediatric Pain Behavior, Quality, and Intensity Item Candidates and the PROMIS Pain Domain Framework in Children With Chronic Pain.

UNLABELLED: As initial steps in a broader effort to develop and test pediatric pain behavior and pain quality item banks for the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS), we used qualitative interview and item review methods to 1) evaluate the overall conceptual scope and content validity of the PROMIS pain domain framework among children with chronic/recurrent pain conditions, and 2) develop item candidates for further psychometric testing. To elicit the experiential and conceptual scope of pain outcomes across a variety of pediatric recurrent/chronic pain conditions, we conducted 32 semi-structured individual and 2 focus-group interviews with children and adolescents (8-17 years), and 32 individual and 2 focus-group interviews with parents of children with pain. Interviews with pain experts (10) explored the operational limits of pain measurement in children. For item bank development, we identified existing items from measures in the literature, grouped them by concept, removed redundancies, and modified the remaining items to match PROMIS formatting. New items were written as needed and cognitive debriefing was completed with the children and their parents, resulting in 98 pain behavior (47 self, 51 proxy), 54 quality, and 4 intensity items for further testing. Qualitative content analyses suggest that reportable pain outcomes that matter to children with pain are captured within and consistent with the pain domain framework in PROMIS. PERSPECTIVE: PROMIS pediatric pain behavior, quality, and intensity items were developed based on a theoretical framework of pain that was evaluated by multiple stakeholders in the measurement of pediatric pain, including researchers, clinicians, and children with pain and their parents, and the appropriateness of the framework was verified.

Patterns of relating between physicians and medical assistants in small family medicine offices.

PURPOSE: The clinician-colleague relationship is a cornerstone of relationship-centered care (RCC); in small family medicine offices, the clinician-medical assistant (MA) relationship is especially important. We sought to better understand the relationship between MA roles and the clinician-MA relationship within the RCC framework. METHODS: We conducted an ethnographic study of 5 small family medicine offices (having <5 clinicians) in the Cincinnati Area Research and Improvement Group (CARInG) Network using interviews, surveys, and observations. We interviewed 19 MAs and supervisors and 11 clinicians (9 family physicians and 2 nurse practitioners) and observed 15 MAs in practice. Qualitative analysis used the editing style. RESULTS: MAs' roles in small family medicine offices were determined by MA career motivations and clinician-MA relationships. MA career motivations comprised interest in health care, easy training/workload, and customer service orientation. Clinician-MA relationships were influenced by how MAs and clinicians respond to their perceptions of MA clinical competence (illustrated predominantly by comparing MAs with nurses) and organizational structure. We propose a model, trust and verify, to describe the structure of the clinician-MA relationship. This model is informed by clinicians' roles in hiring and managing MAs and the social familiarity of MAs and clinicians. Within the RCC framework, these findings can be seen as previously undefined constraints and freedoms in what is known as the Complex Responsive Process of Relating between clinicians and MAs. CONCLUSIONS: Improved understanding of clinician-MA relationships will allow a better appreciation of how clinicians and MAs function in family medicine teams. Our findings may assist small offices undergoing practice transformation and guide future research to improve the education, training, and use of MAs in the family medicine setting.

Faith-based HIV prevention and counseling programs: findings from the Cincinnati census of religious congregations.

Congregations are well positioned to address HIV in their communities, but their response to HIV has been mixed. An emerging literature describes HIV programming in urban, predominantly black congregations, but population-based data remain limited. This study examined the levels of HIV prevention and counseling programs and associated factors (e.g., religious, organizational) by using data from a phone census of congregations in the Greater Cincinnati area (N = 447). Over 10 % of congregations (36 % of Black Protestant and 5-18 % of other types of congregations) offered HIV education/prevention alone or in combination with counseling or with counseling and testing. Path analysis results showed notable significant (p < 0.05) total effects of theology-polity on HIV prevention/counseling programs, but these effects were fully mediated by other factors, including other community work and racial composition. The levels of HIV programming in this study were high by national standards, but further outreach is needed in high-risk African American communities.

Clinical work intensity among physician specialties: how might we assess it? What do we find?

BACKGROUND: The level of work intensity associated with patient encounters has implications for quality of care, patient safety, practice management, and reimbursement. The utility of available instruments for clinical work intensity assessment is unknown. OBJECTIVE: We assessed, in the clinical setting, the performance of existing measures of work intensity that are valid for nonclinical contexts. RESEARCH DESIGN: A cross-sectional, multimeasure design involving work intensity assessments for the last patient encounter and for an entire half-day clinic session. SUBJECTS: A convenience sample of 14 providers from the following 4 specialties: family medicine, general internal medicine, neurology, and surgery. MEASURES: Perceived clinical work intensity was measured by the following 3 instruments: National Aeronautic and Space Administration-Task Load Index, Subjective Workload Assessment Technique, and Multiple Resources Questionnaire; stress was measured by the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire. Convergent validity was assessed by correlation among the instruments. RESULTS: For the last patient encounter, there was a moderate to high correlation between the work intensity instruments' scores (Pearson's r ranged from 0.41 to 0.73) and low to moderate correlation with the distress subscale of the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire (Pearson's r ranged from -0.11 to 0.46), reflecting their stress dimension. Provider personality was associated with reported levels of work intensity and stress. Similar results were obtained when the entire clinic session was the unit of reference. CONCLUSION: Existing measures of work intensity and stress appear to be valid for use in the clinical setting to generate evidence on perceived intensity and stress experienced by providers in the performance of medical services.

Conditions that influence a primary care clinician's decision to refer patients for depression care.

The objective of this study was to identify conditions that influence primary care clinicians' referral decisions related to depression care. Forty primary care clinicians (15 general internists, 10 nurse practitioners, and 15 family practice physicians) were included in this study. The clinicians participated in semistructured interviews and completed two quantitative instruments (with 33 items on depression treatment decision making and 32 items on provider attitudes toward psychosocial care). Data analysis revealed that several conditions influence a clinician's decision to refer a depressed patient to a mental health specialist: the patient's resources, the clinician's comfort in prescribing antidepressants and counseling patients with depression, and familiarity with a mental health specialist and practice environment. The decision to refer a patient with depression to a mental health specialist is a complex process involving the clinician, patient, and practice-related issues. Understanding these relationships may provide strategies to improve depression care management and lead to the design of depression care quality-improvement interventions that accommodate primary care practice context. The findings from this study suggest a need to increase mental health training opportunities for primary care clinicians to strengthen their skills and comfort level in managing depressed patients and encourage the development of relationships between primary care clinicians and mental health specialists to facilitate timely and accessible mental health care for patients.

The nightmares of Puerto Ricans: an embodied 'altered states of consciousness' perspective.

This article examines nightmare narratives collected as part of a person-centered ethnographic study of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and supernaturalism in a mainland Puerto Rican community in the late 1990s. Utilizing a descriptive backdrop informed by cross-cultural studies of ASCs and highlighting the relevance of recent insights from the cognitive sciences of religion and from the anthropology of embodiment or cultural phenomenology, I examine the lived experience and psychocultural elaboration of diverse Puerto Rican nightmare events. Taking the nightmare to be a trauma in its waking-nightmare sense (i.e., through the extreme fright caused by sleep paralysis) as well as an intrusive, traumatic memory in its posttraumatic sense (i.e., a reliving of trauma themes in dreams), I show how the perceptual and interpretive processes evoked by intensely affective ASCs both inform and are informed by Puerto Rican religious and spiritualistic orientations and values.

Older women's descriptions and understandings of their abusers.

Thirty-eight women who were in abusive relationships since age 55 years were interviewed to understand their abuse stories, ways of coping, and health care experiences. In responding to these questions, women described the nature of the abuse perpetrated by their elderly partners and tried to "make sense" of what they had experienced and to define "who" these men were. This took various forms, from personal theories about aging, to labels (ethnic stereotyping, demonizing, pathologizing) to characterizations of the abuser's private versus public behaviors. The authors explore the implications these findings have for assisting the elderly victim and perpetrator.

How experiencing preventable medical problems changed patients' interactions with primary health care.

PURPOSE: We wanted to explore how patients' experiences with preventable problems in primary care have changed their behavioral interactions with the health care system. METHODS: We conducted semistructured interviews with 24 primary care patients, asking them to describe their experiences with self-perceived preventable problems. We analyzed these interviews using the editing method and classified emotional and behavioral responses to experiencing preventable problems. RESULTS: Anger was the most common emotional response, followed by mistrust and resignation. We classified participants' behavioral responses into 4 categories: avoidance (eg, stop going to the doctor), accommodation (eg, learn to deal with delays), anticipation (eg, attend to details, attend to own emotions, acquire knowledge, actively communicate), and advocacy (eg, get a second opinion). CONCLUSIONS: Understanding how patients react to their experiences with preventable problems can assist health care at both the physician-patient and system levels. We propose an association of mistrust with the behaviors of avoidance and advocacy, and suggest that further research explore the potential impact these patient behaviors have on the provision of health care.

Hidden victims: the healthcare needs and experiences of older women in abusive relationships.

BACKGROUND: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a problem in older women, but older victims of IPV are often unidentified in the medical setting because providers think of IPV as a problem of younger women. The experiences of older women with IPV are unknown. This study reports on the healthcare experiences and needs of older victims of IPV. METHODS: Interviews were conducted with 38 women > 55 years who responded to an advertisement recruiting "women who had been in an abusive relationship since age 55." Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed for themes. RESULTS: The median age of participants was 58 years (range 55-90). The majority were Caucasian with annual incomes over dollar 40,000. The median relationship length was 24 years (range 2-67), and 39% remained in their abusive relationships. About half had discussed IPV with a healthcare provider. The themes that were identified included disclosure about IPV and both negative and positive experiences with healthcare providers. Reasons for nondisclosure were similar to those of younger women but were compounded by the generational mores of privacy about domestic affairs and society's lack of understanding and resources for IPV. Some of the women who disclosed IPV to their providers felt discounted and unsupported. Others reported receiving valuable help, including empathy, referrals to resources, assistance in naming the abuse, linking the stress of IPV to health, and respect for their decisions to continue their abusive relationships. CONCLUSIONS: Older women victims have difficulty initiating discussions about IPV with their providers. Providers are encouraged to identify signals of potential abuse and to create privacy with all patients to discuss difficult issues, such as IPV, and to be knowledgeable about appropriate referrals.