Although prehospital point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is gaining in importance, its rapid interpretation remains challenging in prehospital emergency situations. The technical development of remote ...real-time supervision potentially offers the possibility to support emergency medicine providers during prehospital emergency ultrasound. The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of live data transmission and supervision of prehospital POCUS in an urban environment and so to improve patients' safety.
Emergency doctors with moderate ultrasound experience performed prehospital POCUS in emergency cases (n = 24) such as trauma, acute dyspnea or cardiac shock using the portable ultrasound device Lumify™. The ultrasound examination was remotely transmitted to an emergency ultrasound expert in the clinic for real-time supervision via a secure video and audio connection. Technical feasibility as well as quality of communication and live stream were analysed.
Prehospital POCUS with remote real-time supervision was successfully performed in 17 patients (71%). In 3 cases, the expert was not available on time and in 1 case remote data transmission was not possible due to connection problems. In 3 cases tele-supervision was restricted to video only and no verbal communication was possible via the device itself due to power saving mode of the tablet.
Remote real-time supervision of prehospital POCUS in an urban environment is feasible most of the time with excellent image and communication quality.
ClinicalTrials Number NCT04612816.
Introduction Family-centered care (FCC) is a model of care provision that sees a patient’s loved ones as essential partners to the health care team and positively influences the psychological safety ...of patients and loved ones. Objectives This review aims to present an overview of impactful publications, authors, institutions, journals, countries, fields of application and trends of FCC in the 21 st century as well as suggestions on further research. Methods The Web of Science Database was searched for publications on FCC between January 2000 and Dezember 2023. After screening for duplicates, VOS Viewer and CiteSpace were used to analyze and visualize the data. Results Scientific interest in FCC has grown and resulted in the scientific output of 4,836 publications originating from 103 different countries. Based on the frequent author keywords, FCC was of greatest interest in neonatology and pediatrics, nursing, critical and intensive care, end-of-life and palliative care, and patient-related outcomes. The recent research hotspots are “patient engagement,” “qualitative study,” and “health literacy.” Conclusion FCC has gained recognition and spread from the pediatric to the adult palliative, intensive, end-of-life and geriatric care settings. This is a very reassuring development since adults, especially when older, want and need the assistance of their social support systems. Recent research directions include the involvement of patients in the development of FCC strategies, health literacy interventions and the uptake of telemedicine solutions.
Digital teaching in medical education has grown in popularity in the recent years. However, to the best of our knowledge, no bibliometric report to date has been published that analyzes this ...important literature set to reveal prevailing topics and trends and their impacts reflected in citation counts.
We used a bibliometric approach to unveil and evaluate the scientific literature on digital teaching research in medical education, demonstrating recurring research topics, productive authors, research organizations, countries, and journals. We further aimed to discuss some of the topics and findings reported by specific highly cited works.
The Web of Science electronic database was searched to identify relevant papers on digital teaching research in medical education. Basic bibliographic data were obtained by the "Analyze" and "Create Citation Report" functions of the database. Complete bibliographic data were exported to VOSviewer for further analyses. Visualization maps were generated to display the recurring author keywords and terms mentioned in the titles and abstracts of the publications.
The analysis was based on data from 3978 papers that were identified. The literature received worldwide contributions with the most productive countries being the United States and United Kingdom. Reviews were significantly more cited, but the citations between open access vs non-open access papers did not significantly differ. Some themes were cited more often, reflected by terms such as virtual reality, innovation, trial, effectiveness, and anatomy. Different aspects in medical education were experimented for digital teaching, such as gross anatomy education, histology, complementary medicine, medicinal chemistry, and basic life support. Some studies have shown that digital teaching could increase learning satisfaction, knowledge gain, and even cost-effectiveness. More studies were conducted on trainees than on undergraduate students.
Digital teaching in medical education is expected to flourish in the future, especially during this era of COVID-19 pandemic.
Hospitals are institutions whose primary task is to treat patients. Family-centered care, which considers loved ones as equal partners in patient care, has been gaining recognition in the adult care ...setting. Our aim was to record experiences of and opinions on communication between hospital-based healthcare providers and patients' loved ones, related but not limited to the rigorous mitigation measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Twitter profile @HospitalsTalkTo and hashtag #HospitalsTalkToLovedOnes were created to interact with the Twitter public between 7 June 2021 and 7 February 2022. Conversations surrounding #HospitalsTalkToLovedOnes were extracted and subjected to natural language processing analysis using term frequency and Markov chain analysis. Qualitative thematic analysis was performed on the 10% most interacted tweets and of tweets mentioning "COVID" from a personal experience-based subset.
We collected 4412 unique tweets made or interacted by 7040 Twitter users from 142 different countries. The most frequent words were patient, hospital, care, family, loved and communication. Thematic analysis revealed the importance of communication between patients, patients' loved ones and hospitals; showed that patients and their loved ones need support during a patient's hospital journey; and that pediatric care should be the gold standard for adult care. Visitation restrictions due to COVID-19 are just one barrier to communication, others are a lack of phone signal, no space or time for asking questions, and a complex medical system. We formulate 3 recommendations to improve the inclusion of loved ones into the patient's hospital stay.
"Loved ones are not 'visitors' in a patient's life". Irrespective of COVID-19, patient's loved ones need to be included during the patient's hospital journey. Transparent communication and patient empowerment increase patient safety and improve the hospital experience for both the patients and their loved ones. Our findings underline the need for the concept of family-centered care to finally be implemented in adult nursing clinical practice.
Background
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to reshape medical practice and the delivery of healthcare. Online discussions surrounding AI's utility in these domains are increasingly ...emerging, likely due to considerable interest from healthcare practitioners, medical technology developers, and other relevant stakeholders. However, many practitioners and medical students report limited understanding and familiarity with AI.
Objective
To promote research, events, and resources at the intersection of AI and medicine for the online medical community, we created a Twitter-based campaign using the hashtag #MedTwitterAI.
Methods
In the present study, we analyze the use of #MedTwitterAI by tracking tweets containing this hashtag posted from 26th March, 2019 to 26th March, 2021, using the Symplur Signals hashtag analytics tool. The full text of all #MedTwitterAI tweets was also extracted and subjected to a natural language processing analysis.
Results
Over this time period, we identified 7,441 tweets containing #MedTwitterAI, posted by 1,519 unique Twitter users which generated 59,455,569 impressions. The most common identifiable locations for users including this hashtag in tweets were the United States (378/1,519), the United Kingdom (80/1,519), Canada (65/1,519), India (46/1,519), Spain (29/1,519), France (24/1,519), Italy (16/1,519), Australia (16/1,519), Germany (16/1,519), and Brazil (15/1,519). Tweets were frequently enhanced with links (80.2%), mentions of other accounts (93.9%), and photos (56.6%). The five most abundant single words were AI (artificial intelligence), patients, medicine, data, and learning. Sentiment analysis revealed an overall majority of positive single word sentiments (e.g., intelligence, improve) with 230 positive and 172 negative sentiments with a total of 658 and 342 mentions of all positive and negative sentiments, respectively. Most frequently mentioned negative sentiments were cancer, risk, and bias. Most common bigrams identified by Markov chain depiction were related to analytical methods (e.g., label-free detection) and medical conditions/biological processes (e.g., rare circulating tumor cells).
Conclusion
These results demonstrate the generated considerable interest of using #MedTwitterAI for promoting relevant content and engaging a broad and geographically diverse audience. The use of hashtags in Twitter-based campaigns can be an effective tool to raise awareness of interdisciplinary fields and enable knowledge-sharing on a global scale.
BackgroundThe easy accessibility of smartphones and internet connections enables people to stay virtually connected to communities via social media. However, social media is also being explored for ...health care education and dissemination of health-related information. Twitter (Twitter, Inc., San Francisco, California) is one of the popular social media used for spreading health-related information. Twitter enables users to create polls to get opinions from their users. The Twitter poll is a less-explored avenue for health surveys.ObjectiveIn this pilot study, we aimed to explore the feasibility of conducting a questionnaire-based health survey (on the preference of different systems of medicine for the treatment of various health problems) as a Twitter poll.MethodsThis observational study was conducted on Twitter for five consecutive days starting from May 31, 2021. We posted five Twitter polls, one poll each day, for five days in a #INPST unique Twitter campaign. Preferences on the use of modern medicine, traditional medicine, a combination of these two systems, and self-medication were collected on five health conditions. We collected the data from the landing poll page and Tweet Analytics (insight about the engagement of tweets provided free by Twitter). The Chi-square test, binomial test, and one-way Analysis of Variance were used to compare data, and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used to find a correlation between categorical variables.ResultsWe had a mean 4358.6±590.3 poll reach with the engagement of 108.2±36.87 Twitter users and 67.6±28.06 votes. Most of the responses were received on the first day of posting the poll. The participation then gradually decreased. Modern medicine was the first choice for emergency medical care (85.1%, P <0.0001), treatment of cancer (43.6%, P <0.0001), and sexual disorder or transmitted diseases (48.9%, P <0.0001). Traditional medicine was the first choice (37.5%, P = 0.63) for the treatment of common illnesses, and a combination of modern and traditional medicine was the first choice (37.5%, P = 0.01) for the treatment of chronic diseases.ConclusionA medical survey with short questions with a maximum of four response options can be conducted on Twitter. Survey results can be obtained without any third-party analytic service. The response rate is highest on the first day and participation may decrease when multiple polls are posted within a Twitter campaign. Preference for systems of medicine found in this study can be used for designing large-scale surveys in the future.
Online information on COVID-19 vaccination may influence people's perception and willingness to be vaccinated. Official websites of vaccination programs have not been systematically assessed before.
...This study aims to assess and compare the readability and content quality of web-based information on COVID-19 vaccination posted on official/governmental websites. Furthermore, the relationship between evaluated website parameters and country vaccination rates were calculated.
By referring to an open data set hosted at Our World in Data, the 58 countries/regions with the highest total vaccination count as of July 8, 2021, were identified. Together with the websites from the World Health Organization and European Union, a total of 60 vaccination campaign websites were targeted. The "frequently asked questions" or "questions and answers" section of the websites were evaluated in terms of readability (Flesch Reading Ease score and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level), quality (Health On the Net Foundation code HONcode certification and Quality Evaluation Scoring Tool), and content stating vaccination duration of protection and potential side effects.
In terms of readability, the Flesch Reading Ease score of the vaccination frequently asked questions websites ranged between 11.2 and 69.5, with a mean of 40.9 (SD 13.2). Meanwhile, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level ranged between 6.5 and 17.6, with a mean of 12.1 (SD 2.8). In terms of quality, only 2 websites were HONcode certified, and the Quality Evaluation Scoring Tool score of the websites ranged between 7 and 20, with a mean of 15.3 (SD 3.1). Half of the websites (25/50) did not present a publication date or date of the last update. Regarding the duration of protection offered by the vaccines, 46% (23/50) of the websites stated that they do not know, and another 40% (20/50) did not address it. Five side effects of the vaccinations were most frequently mentioned, namely, fever/chill (41/50, 82%), various injection site discomfort events (eg, swelling, redness, or pain; 39/50, 78%), headache (36/50, 72%), fatigue (33/50, 66%), and muscle/joint pain (31/50, 62%).
In general, the content quality of most of the evaluated websites was good, but HONcode certification should be considered, content should be written in a more readable manner, and a publication date or date of the last update should be presented.
On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Committee declared the rapid worldwide spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) a global health emergency. By December 2020, ...the safety and efficacy of the first COVID-19 vaccines had been demonstrated. However, international vaccination coverage rates have remained below expectations (in Europe, at manuscript submission). Mandatory vaccination is currently being controversially discussed and has already been introduced in some countries (Austria, Greece, Italy). We used the Twitter survey system as a viable method to quickly and comprehensively gather international public health insights on mandatory vaccination against COVID-19.
The purpose of this study was to better understand the public's perception of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in real-time utilizing Twitter polls.
Two Twitter polls were developed (in the English language) to seek the public's opinion on the possibility of mandatory vaccination. The polls were pinned to the Digital Health and Patient Safety Platform's (based in Vienna, Austria) Twitter timeline for one week in mid-November 2021, three days after the official public announcement of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in Austria. Twitter users were asked to participate and retweet the polls to reach the largest possible audience.
Our Twitter polls revealed two extremes on the topic of mandatory vaccination against COVID-19. Almost half of the respondents (49% 1,246/2,545) favor mandatory vaccination, at least in certain areas. This attitude contrasts with the 45.7% (1,162/2,545) who categorically reject mandatory vaccination. 26.3% (621/2,365) of participating Twitter users said they would never get vaccinated, reflected by the current Western European and North American vaccination coverage rate. Concatenating interpretation of these two polls should be done cautiously as participating populations might significantly differ.
Mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 (in at least certain areas) is favored by less than 50%, whereas it is opposed by almost half of the surveyed Twitter users. Since (social) media strongly influences public perceptions and views and social media discussions and surveys are specifically susceptible to the "echo chamber effect", the results should be interpreted as a momentary snapshot. Therefore, the results of this study need to be complemented by long-term surveys to maintain their validity.
Background
Crowdsourcing is a low-cost, adaptable, and innovative method to collect ideas from numerous contributors with diverse backgrounds. Crowdsourcing from social media like Twitter can be used ...for generating ideas in a noticeably brief time based on contributions from globally distributed users. The world has been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic in the last several years. Measures to combat the pandemic continue to evolve worldwide, and ideas and opinions on optimal counteraction strategies are of high interest.
Objective
This study aimed to validate the use of Twitter as a crowdsourcing platform in order to gain an understanding of public opinion on what measures can help to end the COVID-19 pandemic faster.
Methods
This cross-sectional study was conducted during the period from December 22, 2021, to February 4, 2022. Tweets were posted by accounts operated by the authors, asking “How to faster end the COVID-19 pandemic?” and encouraging the viewers to comment on measures that they perceive would be effective to achieve this goal. The ideas from the users' comments were collected and categorized into two major themes – personal and institutional measures. In the final stage of the campaign, a Twitter poll was conducted to get additional comments and to estimate which of the two groups of measures were perceived to be important amongst Twitter users.
Results
The crowdsourcing campaign generated seventeen suggested measures categorized into two major themes (personal and institutional) that received a total of 1,727 endorsements (supporting comments, retweets, and likes). The poll received a total of 325 votes with 58% of votes underscoring the importance of both personal and institutional measures, 20% favoring personal measures, 11% favoring institutional measures, and 11% of the votes given just out of curiosity to see the vote results.
Conclusions
Twitter was utilized successfully for crowdsourcing ideas on strategies how to end the COVID-19 pandemic faster. The results indicate that the Twitter community highly values the significance of both personal responsibility and institutional measures to counteract the pandemic. This study validates the use of Twitter as a primary tool that could be used for crowdsourcing ideas with healthcare significance.
The DNA damage response (DDR) and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) are two crucial cellular programs in cancer biology. While the DDR orchestrates cell-cycle progression, DNA repair, and ...cell death, EMT promotes invasiveness, cellular plasticity, and intratumor heterogeneity. Therapeutic targeting of EMT transcription factors, such as ZEB1, remains challenging, but tumor-promoting DDR alterations elicit specific vulnerabilities. Using multi-omics, inhibitors, and high-content microscopy, we discover a chemoresistant ZEB1-high-expressing sub-population (ZEB1hi) with co-rewired cell-cycle progression and proficient DDR across tumor entities. ZEB1 stimulates accelerated S-phase entry via CDK6, inflicting endogenous DNA replication stress. However, DDR buildups involving constitutive MRE11-dependent fork resection allow homeostatic cycling and enrichment of ZEB1hi cells during transforming growth factor β (TGF-β)-induced EMT and chemotherapy. Thus, ZEB1 promotes G1/S transition to launch a progressive DDR benefitting stress tolerance, which concurrently manifests a targetable vulnerability in chemoresistant ZEB1hi cells. Our study thus highlights the translationally relevant intercept of the DDR and EMT.
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•Intercellular heterogeneity in ZEB1 levels is a general feature of cancer cells•ZEB1 promotes G1/S transition via CDK6 to inflict endogenous DNA replication stress•Replication stress tolerance in ZEB1hi cells requires MRE11-engaging DDR adaptation•DDR buildups render ZEB1hi cells chemoresistant but sensitive to MRE11 inhibition
ZEB1 is heterogeneously expressed in cancer cells. Characterizing sub-populations with high ZEB1 levels (ZEB1hi), Schuhwerk et al. show that ZEB1 induces G1/S transition via CDK6 to launch an adaptive MRE11-involving response promoting chemoresistance. Targeting of ZEB1hi cells by MRE11 inhibition allows chemosensitization, reinforcing the translational impact of the EMT-DDR interface.
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