"Give My Daughter the Shot!": A Content Analysis of the Depiction of Patients with Cancer Pain and Their Management in Hollywood Films.

INTRODUCTION: Cinemeducation, the pedagogical use of films, has been used in a variety of clinical disciplines. To date, no studies have looked at the use of film depictions of cancer pain and its management in clinical education. We investigated how patients with cancer pain and their management are depicted in Hollywood films to determine whether there is content that would be amenable to use for cancer pain assessment and management education. METHODS: A qualitative content analysis was performed. Films that contained characters with or references to cancer pain were searched for using the International Movie Database, the Literature Arts Medicine Database, the History of Medicine and Medical Humanities Database, and Medicine on Screen. After review, 4 films were identified for review and analysis. RESULTS: Themes that emerged from the analysis concerned the films' depictions of characters with pain, their healthcare providers, the therapies used for pain management, and the setting in which pain management was provided. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that patients with cancer pain are depicted in a compassionate manner. Pain management focused on the use of opioids. The settings in which patients received pain management was depicted as not being amenable to providing holistic care. This variety of topics related to pain management covered in the films make them amenable to use in cinemeducation. This study therefore forms the basis for future work developing film-based cancer education modules.

Popcorn in the pain clinic: A content analysis of the depiction of patients with chronic pain and their management in motion pictures.

The watching of films is popular and accessible to broad segments of the population. The depiction of medical conditions in films has the potential to affect the public's perception of them and contribute to stereotypes and stigma. We investigated how patients with chronic pain and their management are depicted in feature films. Films that contained characters with or references to chronic pain were searched for using databases such as the International Movie Database. Themes that emerged from the content analysis revolved around the films' depictions of characters with pain, their health care providers, and therapies for pain management. Patients with chronic pain were depicted in various ways, including in manners that could elicit empathy from audiences or that might contribute to the development of negative stereotypes about them. The attitudes of health care professionals toward patients with chronic pain ranged from compassionate to dispassionate. Pain management was typically depicted as lacking in breadth or using multidisciplinary approaches with a focus on pharmacological management. The variety of topics related to chronic pain depicted in feature films lends to their use in medical education strategies to better inform health care professions trainees about chronic pain management.

Le visionnement de films est populaire et accessible à de larges segments de la population. La représentation des affections médicales dans les films est susceptible d'affecter la perception qu'en a le public et de contribuer aux stéréotypes et à la stigmatisation. Nous avons étudié comment les patients souffrant de douleur chronique et leur prise en charge sont représentés dans les longs métrages. Les films qui contenaient des personnages ou des références à la douleur chronique ont été recherchés à l'aide de bases de données telles que l'International Movie Database. Les thèmes qui sont ressortis de l'analyse du contenu tournaient autour des représentations des personnages souffrant de douleur, de leurs prestataires de soins de santé et des traitements pour la prise en charge de la douleur. Les patients souffrant de douleur chronique étaient représentés de diverses manières, y compris de manière à susciter l'empathie du public ou contribuer à l'apparition de stéréotypes négatifs à leur sujet. L'attitude des professionnels de la santé à l'égard des patients souffrant de douleur chronique allait de la compassion à la circonspection. La prise en charge de la douleur était généralement décrite comme manquant d'envergure ou utilisant des approches multidisciplinaires, tout en mettant l'accent sur la prise en charge pharmacologique. La variété des sujets liés à la douleur chronique présentés dans les longs métrages favorise leur utilisation dans les stratégies d'éducation médicale pour mieux informer les professionnels de la santé en formation sur la prise en charge de la douleur chronique.

Improving Financial Literacy Using the Medical Mini-MBA at a Canadian Medical School.

Introduction Financial literacy correlates with less debt and better retirement planning. Medical students, residents, and physicians often have poor financial literacy and large amounts of debt. We measured baseline financial literacy and whether it improved with the administration of a financial literacy course. Methods We created the Medical Mini-MBA,a six-week financial literacy course that targeted gaps in financial literacy among medical students and residents. Weekly topics included personal finance, investing, real estate and mortgage, physician billing and payment models, income and tax, and choosing a medical specialty. A 46-question financial literacy assessment was delivered to participants before and after the course. Results Of the 276 who participated in the course, 179 (64.86%) participated in the study. Participants who completed the course improved their financial literacy score by 10.10/46.00±5.12 (n=93, p<0.001). Self-assessment of financial literacy was positively correlated with financial literacy exam scores (r=0.366, p<0.001). Demographics such as gender, geography, education level, and first-degree relatives who are/were physicians had no effect on financial literacy scores. Conclusions The Medical Mini-MBA improved financial literacy at a Canadian medical school. Implementation of the coursemay equip medical students and residents for financial decisions. It avoids financial conflicts of interest and can supplement the medical curriculum.

Hazardous alcohol use and alcohol-related harm in rural and remote communities: a scoping review.

Alcohol use is a major risk factor for death and disease worldwide and alcohol-related harms appear to be more prevalent in rural and remote, relative to urban, communities. This Review synthesised international research on rural-urban disparities in hazardous and harmful alcohol use and risk factors for these outcomes within rural and remote communities. 280 studies from 49 countries were included in the Scoping Review. Most studies (60%) found rural, relative to urban, residence to be associated with an increased likelihood of hazardous alcohol use or alcohol-related harm. This proportion increased between 1990 and 2019 and varied by country, age group, and outcome type, being highest in Australia, among young adults, and for more severe alcohol-related harms, such as drink driving and alcohol-related suicide. Improved public health strategies to reduce the burden of alcohol use in rural communities are required but their efficacy will depend on how well they are tailored to the unique needs of the region they are implemented in.

Swelling-Based Distributed Chemical Sensing with Standard Acrylate Coated Optical Fibers.

Distributed chemical sensing is demonstrated using standard acrylate coated optical fibers. Swelling of the polymer coating induces strain in the fiber's silica core provoking a local refractive index change which is detectable all along an optical fiber by advanced distributed sensing techniques. Thermal effects can be discriminated from strain using uncoated fiber segments, leading to more accurate strain readings. The concept has been validated by measuring strain responses of various aqueous and organic solvents and different chain length alkanes and blends thereof. Although demonstrated on a short range of two meters using optical frequency-domain reflectometry, the technique can be applied to many kilometer-long fiber installations. Low-cost and insensitive to corrosion and electromagnetic radiation, along with the possibility to interrogate thousands of independent measurement points along a single optical fiber, this novel technique is likely to find applications in environmental monitoring, food analysis, agriculture, water quality monitoring, or medical diagnostics.

Investigating the atomic level influencing factors of glass forming ability in NiAl and CuZr metallic glasses.

Bulk metallic glasses are a relatively new class of amorphous metal alloy which possess unique mechanical and magnetic properties. The specific concentrations and combinations of alloy elements needed to prevent crystallization during melt quenching remains poorly understood. A correlation between atomic properties that can explain some of the previously identified glass forming ability (GFA) anomalies of the NiAl and CuZr systems has been identified, with these findings likely extensible to other transition metal-transition metal and transition metal-metalloid (TM-M) alloy classes as a whole. In this work, molecular dynamics simulation methods are utilized to study thermodynamic, kinetic, and structural properties of equiatomic CuZr and NiAl metallic glasses in an attempt to further understand the underlying connections between glass forming ability, nature of atomic level bonding, short and medium range ordering, and the evolution of structure and relaxation properties in the disordered phase. The anomalous breakdown of the fragility parameter as a useful GFA indicator in TM-M alloy systems is addressed through an in-depth investigation of bulk stiffness properties and the evolution of (pseudo)Gruneisen parameters over the quench domain, with the efficacy of other common glass forming ability indicators similarly being analyzed through direct computation in respective CuZr and NiAl systems. Comparison of fractional liquid-crystal density differences in the two systems revealed 2-3 times higher values for the NiAl system, providing further support for its efficacy as a general purpose GFA indicator.