Adolescent sexuality in Singapore.
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BACKGROUND: The presence of the Unified Family Court, with procedures emphasizing judicial case management and settlement in custody disputes, provided an opportunity to combine these practices with those of a university hospital-based family court clinic experienced in the provision of custody assessments. Specifically, a process integrating the clinical custody assessment with the work of counsel and court procedures was developed. This format, incorporating the preparation of a clinical settlement conference brief, was then evaluated with emphasis on time management, outcome in relation to settlement or trial, and the effect of clinical assessment at critical points in the combined endeavour. METHOD: Seventy-two judicial referrals conducted using this format were reviewed. To assess efficiency, we determined time intervals to various points in the process and compared them to previous local practice. Settlement rates, recorded incrementally to mark each component's contribution, were compared with rates noted in the literature. Assessment functions were identified according to the point of resolution of the dispute and in a manner to facilitate comparison with previously published work. RESULTS: The format resulted in 50% of cases settling without trial in under 5 months, a minimum settlement rate of 50%, and confirmed the ability of clinical assessment to contribute flexibly to dispute resolution in several conciliation venues and at trial. CONCLUSIONS: Combining legal and mental health efforts can results in more efficient use of resources and a substantial diversion of cases from continuing litigation. While altering the process of clinical assessments enhances such findings, further work is required to assure appropriate selection criteria for various intervention formats.
OBJECTIVE: To explore factors affecting recruitment and retention of pharmacists in rural/remote areas of New South Wales (NSW). DESIGN: Qualitative semistructured in-depth interviews. SETTING: Primary care--rural/remote community pharmacies. PARTICIPANTS: Purposive sample of 12 community pharmacists. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Factors affecting recruitment and retention of pharmacists in rural/remote areas of NSW. RESULTS: Respondents reported a variety of personal and professional reasons for taking up rural practice, including previous rural experience and a preference for working in rural over metropolitan areas. The main factor affecting retention in rural areas was the high level of professional satisfaction and interprofessional rapport. Perceived reasons for the current under-supply of pharmacists to rural/remote areas of NSW included changing demographics of the pharmacy undergraduate degree programs and pharmacy workforce, and negative perceptions of rural pharmacy practice and rural lifestyle. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified factors believed to affect recruitment and retention of pharmacists in rural/remote areas. There appears to be considerable overlap between the factors, with different weightings of importance for different individuals. The lack of consensus for a proposed method of resolving this problem highlights its complexity and the need for further studies in this area.
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OBJECTIVE: To provide an evidence-based summary of medications commonly used for bipolar disorders and a practical approach to managing bipolar disorders in the office. QUALITY OF EVIDENCE: Articles from 1990 to 2003 were selected from MEDLINE using the key words "bipolar disorder," "antiepileptics," "antipsychotics," "antidepressants," and "mood stabilizers." Good-quality evidence for many of these treatments comes from randomized trials. Lithium, divalproex, carbamazepine, lamotrigine, oxcarbazepine, and some novel antipsychotics all have level I evidence for treating various aspects of the disorder. MAIN MESSAGE: Treatment of bipolar disorder involves three therapeutic domains: acute mania, acute depression, and maintenance. Lithium has been a mainstay of treatment for some time, but antiepileptic drugs like divalproex, carbamazepine, and lamotrigine, along with novel antipsychotic drugs like olanzapine, risperidone, and quetiapine, alone or in combination, are increasingly being used successfully to treat acute mania and to maintain mood stability. CONCLUSION: Bipolar disorder is more common in family practice than previously believed. Drug treatments for this complex disorder have evolved rapidly over the past decade, radically changing its management. Treatment now tends to be very successful.
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Autologous blood predeposit before elective surgery is a rapidly expanding transfusion practice. The authors have conducted a 3-year analysis of an autologous blood predeposit program to assess its impact on orthopaedic joint surgery. The authors conclude: autologous blood donation has resulted in a reduction of homologous blood transfusions in patients undergoing elective hip and knee procedures from 73% to 18% and from 71% to 12%, respectively. In addition, autologous blood preoperative donation in elective orthopaedic joint surgery has increased dramatically, so that while previously this practice was considered underutilized, autologous blood as an alternative to homologous blood transfusion now represents a standard of practice for elective orthopaedic joint arthroplasty at University Hospitals of Cleveland.
In five previous papers, the concept of the Cumulative Radiation Effect (CRE) has been presented as a scale of accumulative sub-tolerance radiation damage. The biological effect generated in normal connective tissue by fractionated or continuous radiation therapy given in any temporal arrangement is described by the CRE on a unified scale of assessment, so that a unique value of the CRE describes a specific level of radiation effect. The basic methods of evaluating CREs were shown in the papers to facilitate a full understanding of the fundamental aspects of the CRE-system, but these methods can be time-consuming and tedious for complex situations. In the previous papers in this series, one way of overcoming the difficulties in evaluating CRE problems was presented in simple nomographic and tabular methods for the solution of practical problems. An alternative way of overcoming the difficulties in the evaluation of CRE problems is to use computers and it is the purpose of this paper to outline computer calculations and applications in clinical practice in connection with the CRE-system. In a general appraisal of the applications of computers to the CRE-system, the various problems encountered in clinical radiotherapy are categorised into those involving the evaluation of a CRE at a point in tissue and those involving the calculation of CRE distributions. As a general guide, the computer techniques adopted at the Glasgow Institute of Radiotherapeutics for the solution of CRE problems are presented, and consist basically of a package of three interactive programs for point CRE calculations and a Fortan program which calculates CRE distributions for iso-effect treatment planning. Many examples are given to demonstrate the applications of these programs, and special emphasis has been laid on the problem of treating a point in tissue with different doses per fraction on alternate treatment days. The wide range of possible clinical applications of the CRE-system has been outlined and described under the categories of routine clinical applicatons, retrospective and prospective surveys of patient treatment, and experimental and theoretical research. Some of these applications such as the results of surveys and studies of time optimisation of treatment schedules could have far-reaching consequences and lead to significant improvements in treatment and cure rates with the minimum damage to normal tissue.
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Epilepsy care in general practice has been criticized, but what do GPs feel they deal with most and complete satisfactorily? If criticism is justified, education should be useful in improving epilepsy care, but what do general practitioners want to learn and how do they want to learn it? Questionnaires about these issues were sent to randomly chosen general practitioners throughout the United Kingdom. One hundred and twenty-four out of 200 (62%) responded. They were not biased by age, sex, type of practice or previous interest in epilepsy. Drug treatment and regular review were the two areas of care GPs said they dealt with most, but only half felt they dealt with them well. Sixty-six percent wanted to learn more about drug treatment, 46% about lifestyle advice, 45% about non-drug treatment, 44% about diagnosis and only 16% did not want to learn more about any aspect of care. Weekdays and evenings were the preferred times for study. Courses up to one full day away from practices were popular, distance learning and personal education plans were not, except for a group of younger GPs. When attending courses multi-disciplinary lectures rated highly and nearly three-quarters preferred to attend courses where epilepsy was covered in conjunction with other conditions. Future epilepsy education for GPs should recognize these findings if attendance and positive outcomes are to be maximized.