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General practitioners and postgraduate education in the Northern Region.

We describe a survey of general practitioners in the Northern Region which was carried out during the summer of 1977 as the result of a commission from the Education Committee of the North of England Faculty of the Royal College of General Practitioners. Seventy-five per cent of a one in two random sample of general practitioner principals returned a postal questionnaire in which their perceptions of postgraduate education were sought and their behaviour measured by the number of sessions they attended during the previous year at their 'usual' and other postgraduate centres. Almost half the respondents had more than a basic qualification and all but three per cent had held full-time hospital appointments, two thirds of them at the level of senior house officer or above. Their experience as general practitioner principals averaged 15 years and 57 per cent held part-time appointments outside their practices. Only four per cent had not attended any postgraduate events during the previous year but the remaining respondents had attended eight sessions on average, six of which were at their usual centres. Those attending more than the average number of sessions tended to have registered between 1950 and 1969, to work in larger practices, to hold additional appointments, or to be trainers or College tutors. Most of the respondents were conservative in their perceptions of teaching methods, the topics discussed at meetings, and the contributors to postgraduate education but the younger general practitioners and a group of established general practitioners affiliated to the Royal College of General Practitioners held more radical views. They agreed about the primacy of traditional clinical topics but were sceptical of the value of ward rounds and formal lectures and favoured the seminar and clinical attachments. They saw a need for more material about practice management and wanted experienced general practitioners and community paramedical staff as teachers in addition to hospital consultants. Most of the respondents believed that their usual centres were well organized and managed but failed to cater for the special requirements of general practitioners in non-clinical aspects of practice. Lunchtime and evenings were seen as the most convenient for weekday meetings and Sunday as the most convenient day of the week. A majority of respondents believed that post-graduate education had altered their practice of clinical medicine but only 15 per cent believed it had caused changes in their practice organization.

Education, Medical, Continuing

Detecting areas of deficiency in factual knowledge of general practitioners.

Approximately one-third of all general practitioners returned a multiple choice questionnaire covering general medical knowledge. The overall average score was 63.6 percent and a definite fall off was observed with advancing age. It was also found that those who worked in group practices did rather better than those in single-handed practice--similarly full-time general practitioners performed rather better than part-time general practitioners. The proportion of respondents who were members of a recognised college of general practitioners approximates to the proportion of all general practitioners in New Zealand who are college members. The average mark for college members was exactly the same as the average mark for the group as a whole, suggesting that college members represent a typical cross section of the general practitioner community. This survey could be a useful baseline for further studies in the future should continuing education become obligatory for maintaining college membership.

Age Factors

A study of some factors affecting generalization of language training.

Two related experiments examined generalization across contexts involving different sentence forms when selected grammatical features were trained within a single syntactic context. Results obtained within a single-subject multiple baseline design showed that training the verbal/auxiliary (contracted with pronoun he) was sufficient to induce its generalization across a variety of verbs, object noun phrases, and a different subjective case pronoun, but not across an objective case pronoun. Similar results were obtained for the uncontractible auxiliary in the past tense. Generalization of the uncontractible auxiliary in the present tense was noted across different verbs; so also was the generalization of contractible copula to different adjectives qualifying the subjective case pronouns he and she (but not in qualifying an objective case pronoun it). Finally, generalization of possessive s inflection across male, female, and animal categories was evident. Trained behavior generalized to home situation in one of the experiments. Some unexpected results also suggest that training on certain forms of either verbal auxiliary or copula may be sufficient to generate correct production of both of them.

Behavior Therapy

Cardiac dysrhythmias during outpatient general anesthesia--a comparison study.

Seventy-seven ASA Class I patients were studied to compare the cardiac dysrhythmias occurring during outpatient office general anesthesia for oral surgery to dysrhythmias occurring during outpatient medical and surgical office procedures without general anesthesia and to dysrhythmias occurring in inpatients having minor operating room procedures under general anesthesia. Eighty-eight percent of the operating room group, 81% of the oral surgery group, and 45% of the non-general-anesthetic group had some form of dysrhythmia. There was a statistically significant difference between the numbers of dysrhythmias that occurred in the general anesthetic groups and the non-general-anesthetic group. None of the dysrhythmias documented was of the potentially fatal or extremely serious category.

Adolescent

Pathophysiology of generalized penicillin epilepsy in the cat: the role of cortical and subcortical structures. I. Systemic application of penicillin.

The mechanism of precipitation of generalized epileptiform discharges in feline generalized penicillin epilepsy, a model of human generalized corticoreticular ('centrencephalic') epilepsy, was studied in acute and chronic experiments in cats with implanted skull and intracerebral electrodes. Single shock and low frequency repetitive stimulation of subcortical sites from which prior to penicillin administration spindle activity and recruiting responses could be elicited, readily triggered epileptiform discharges in the same animals after penicillin. These structures comprised the intralaminar and midline thalamic nuclei, the neostriatum, and some posterior thalamic association nuclei (Pulvinar and nucleus lateralis posterior). Subcortical and cortical structures which prior to penicillin elicited neither spindle activity nor recruiting responses were significantly less effective in triggering generalized epileptic bursts after penicillin injection. The probability with which such bursts were elicited from these structures was still, however, in many instances above chance level. It is concluded that the generalized epileptiform discharges in feline generalized penicillin epilepsy can be triggered from a large number of brain sites, but most reliably so from subcortical nuclei involved in spindle generation and recruiting responses. The experimental evidence presented still does not allow one to determine whether epileptic alteration of neuronal function in this form of epilepsy primarily resides in cortical or subcortical nerve cells or in both.

Animals

Effects of changes in cortical excitability upon the epileptic bursts in generalized penicillin epilepsy of the cat.

Previous studies had suggested that the epileptic bursts of feline generalized penicillin epilepsy represent the response of hyperexcitable cortex to thalamocortical volleys normally evoking spindles. If this were the case, it should be possible to convert the epileptic bursts of generalized penicillin epilepsy into spindles by decreasing the excitability of cortical neurons. In cats exhibiting the EEG signs of feline generalized penicillin epilepsy cortical excitability was decreased by hypoxia, by the topical application to the cortex of KCl (inducing spreading depression), barbiturates, GABA, AMP or noradrenaline. During generalized penicillin epilepsy, hypoxia and KCl-induced spreading depression abolished epileptic bursts which were replaced by spindles. When spindles and epileptic complexes occurring in the same animal were compared, a direct correlation between the frequencies of these two rhythms could be demonstrated, that of the epileptic complexes being about half that of the spindle waves. These observations support the hypothesis that the epileptic bursts of feline generalized penicillin epilepsy are induced by thalamocortical volleys normally involved in spindle genesis. Topical cortical applications of barbiturates, GABA, AMP and noradrenaline reduced or inverted the negative spikes of the spike and wave complexes, while augmenting the negative slow waves, or revealing them clearly in instances in which they had been poorly developed. This effect is interpreted as being due to a selective inactivation of the superficial cortical layers. That topical cortical application of barbiturates, GABA, AMP and noradrenaline was capable of transforming into typical spike and wave complex epileptic bursts, which had not previously conformed to this pattern, indicates that the intracortical electrophysiological events of typical and atypical epileptic bursts in feline generalized penicillin epilepsy are fundamentally the same and reflect an alternation between excitatory and inhibitory sequences.

Adenosine Monophosphate

[The problems posed to the general practitioner by depression (author's transl)].

Given the high incidence of depression, it is necessary and desirable that as many cases as possible should be treated by general practitioners. However, general practitioners are on the whole ill-prepared to meet the needs of depressed patients. In the last few years a big effort has been made in certain countries to improve the psychiatric training of general practitioner and to enable him the better to detect and treat depression. Communication between psychiatrists and general practitioners is made difficult by the lack of a common language and terms used should be defined clearly. Some of the problems in practice are diagnostic in nature: detect of the depressive syndrome, of the minor or masked forms; differential diagnosis of depression and anxiety. The commonest problems in treatment are: selection of drug, monitoring of side-effects, duration of treatment. The general practitioner needs information also on such questions as: how to evaluate the risk of suicide; when to call in the specialist; how far to use supportive psychotherapy. Some types of depression are particularly likely to come to the general practitioner: depression masked by physical symptoms, depression associated with or secondary to physical disease, depression in the elderly.

Antidepressive Agents, Tricyclic

Generalization of morphine and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) stimulus properties to narcotic analgesics.

The present investigation sought to determine whether the stimulus properties of morphine and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) would generalize to several narcotic analgesics which vary in their subjective effects. Morphine and saline served as discriminative stimuli for one group of rats in a 2-lever discrimination task. LSD and saline were discriminative stimuli for a second group. Depression of one lever in an operant chamber resulted in reinforcement following the administration of morphine or LSD and the opposite lever was reinforced after saline. After discriminated responding was stable, stimulus generalization tests with narcotic analgesics and antagonists showed that the stimulus properties of morphine generalized to methadone and meperidine, and partially to pentazocine, all of which produce morphine-like subjective effects in humans. Morphine stimulus properties did not generalize to nalorphine or cyclazocine, which produce dissimilar subjective effects. The stimulus properties of LSD generalized partially to cyclazocine, but not to nalorphine. In humans cyclazocine and nalorphine produce a high incidence of psychotomimetic effects, but the subjective effects of cyclazocine are differentiable from those of LSD.

Analgesics, Opioid

X chromosome-wide association studies for quantitative trait loci based on the mixture of general pedigrees and additional unrelated individuals.

Genome-wide association studies have successfully identified many genetic variants associated with complex traits. However, most existing methods target autosomes rather than X chromosome, and several existing X chromosome-wide association studies (XWAS) at quantitative trait loci (QTL) largely focus on unrelated individuals, with limited attention to general pedigrees or mixture of general pedigrees and additional unrelated individuals (called the mixed data for brevity). In this study, we propose nine novel methods for XWAS at QTL in the mixed data (${\mathrm{MQX}}_{\mathrm{cat}}$, ${\mathrm{MQZ}}_{\mathrm{max}}$, ${\mathrm{MT}}_{\mathrm{plinkw}}$, ${\mathrm{MT}}_{\mathrm{chenw}}$, $\mathrm{MwM}3\mathrm{VNA}$, ${\mathrm{MQMVX}}_{\mathrm{cat}}$, ${\mathrm{MQMVZ}}_{\mathrm{max}}$, $\mathrm{MpMV}$, and $\mathrm{McMV}$), also applicable to general pedigrees alone. The first four methods test for mean differences across genotypes; the latter four test for differences in both means and variances; $\mathrm{MwM}3\mathrm{VNA}$ tests for variance differences only. All mean-based and mean-variance-based methods incorporate X chromosome inactivation information, and all nine methods consider genetic relatedness in pedigrees. Simulation studies confirm well-controlled type I error rates, and inclusion of pedigrees significantly improves statistical power. Note that there has been no study focusing on X chromosome for the mixed data or general pedigrees from UK Biobank database, so we apply our proposed methods to this dataset, which identify five total cholesterol (TC)-associated and 13 low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C)-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis reveals that these SNPs fall into three distinct LD blocks. Functional annotation and gene ontology enrichment analysis reveal 16 and 28 enriched pathways for TC-associated and LDL-C-associated genes, respectively. These methods provide robust and powerful tools for XWAS at QTL in both mixed data and general pedigrees.

Quantitative Trait Loci

Psychiatric consultation services in the large general hospital: a review and a new report.

Studies are reviewed documenting increased interest in psychiatric consultation services in the general hospital, and disparities between the need for and the availability/utilization of consultation services are examined. The emergence of the eclectrically trained psychiatrist as the most acceptable consultant in the general hospital is discussed. An exploratory attiduinal questionnaire, developed and circulated to a sample of attending physicians in a midwestern university teaching hospital, yielded the following data. Thirty-nine per cent (N=96) of the 244 physicians who received the questionnaire responded. Ninety-nine per cent of the respondents agreed that readily available psychiatric consultation services should be fully operative in all large general hospitals; 88% agreed that psychiatric consultations in the general hospital must be performed by a physician with special training in psychological medicine; 50% indicated a preference for a biologically-oriented psychiatrist, and 26% preferred a family practitioner or internist who had subsequently become a psychiatrist. The majority of respondents indicated that between July 1974 and July 1975, 1-5% of their private hospitalized patients received inhospital psychiatric consultation. Eighty-six per cent of the respondents felt the patients should be billed directly at a rate equal to other medical/surgical consultations. These data are correlated with issues involved in the utilization of psychiatric consultation in the general hospital.

Aftercare

General surgeons and their surgical practices.

The work characteristics of general surgeons were studied as part of a national study of surgeon manpower. General surgeons were found to work long hours relative to other surgical specialists. Although general surgeons' operative workloads ranked fourth among the 10 surgical specialties, they were only modest in comparison with the surgeons with the highest operative loads (thoracic surgeons). The major conclusion is that the supply of general surgeons is more than adequate to meet the need for general surgeon consultants.

Certification

Determinants of the ability of general practitioners to detect psychiatric illness.

This study of psychiatric illness among 4098 patients attending 91 general practitioners compares 2 methods of case identification: 'conspicuous morbidity' by the doctor's own assessments, and 'probable prevalence' by the patients' responses to the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). In general, the latter gives somewhat higher estimates than the former, but there are wide variations in morbidity between practices. The ability of each general practitioner to detect psychiatric illness was measured by computing Spearman's correlation coefficient between his assessments and the GHQ scores of his patients. The mean correlation coefficient was + 0.36, but the range was very wide (0.09-0.60). The first part of the study deals with various demographic characteristics of the patients themselves which are associated with an increased likelihood of the doctor detecting a psychiatric illness; such factors include unemployment, female sex, and marriages which have ended by separation, divorce or death. The second part of the study examines characteristics of the doctors themselves in an attempt to account for the wide variation between them in their ability to detect psychiatric illness. A research psychiatrist made detailed observations on 2098 interviews carried out by 55 general practitioners. Each doctor's verbal and non-verbal styles were recorded minutely, and in addition various global ratings were made. The doctors completed personality inventories and supplied details of training and professional background. It was possible to account for 67% of the variance of correlation coefficient mainly in terms of 2 dimensions: 'interest and concern' and 'conservatism'. The way in which the doctor interviews his patients is shown to be important, but there are interactions between interview style and the doctor's personality.

Adolescent

Postgraduate training for general practice in the United Kingdom.

Although the role of general practice is well established in the United Kingdom's National Health Service, formal postgraduate training for primary care practice is a recent development. Trainees may enter three-year programs of coordinated inpatient and outpatient training or may select a series of independent posts. Programs have been developed to train general practitioners as teachers, and innovative courses have been established. Nevertheless, there is a curious emphasis on inpatient experiences, especially since British general practitioners seldom treat patients in the hospital. In their outpatient experiences trainees are provided with little variety in their instructors, practice settings, and medical problems. The demands on this already strained system will soon be increased due to recent legislation requiring postgraduate training for all new general practitioners. With a better understanding of training for primary care in the National Health Service, those planning American primary care training may avoid the problems and incorporate the attributes of British training for general practice.

Certification

Evaluation and peer review of the role of specialist and general medical units in a teaching hospital.

The trend toward increasing specialization in the medical wards of teaching hospitals has important implications for future health care delivery and student teaching. A study of the likely implications of a change to a specialty oriented medical admission system at the Royal Adelaide Hospital has shown that already the general physicians are seeing little renal and endocrine disease and, that work satisfaction is greater on the specialty units than on the general medical units. Patient satisfaction marginally favoured the specialty units. A peer review audit method was introduced to try and discern whether the quality of care was significantly different on the two types of units. Most physicians cooperated in at least one or two audits which involved them in judgements about adequacy of casenotes, management decisions, follow-up arrangements, length of stay and investigations in randomly assigned specialty pairs of patients (cared for by specialist or general units). No clear-cut trend was discerned favouring specialist or generalist care amongst 17 randomly selected pairs, but this part of the study was never completed, perhaps partly because of lack of enthusiasm for it by busy clinicians. The importance of maintaining a model of generalism for medical students on the teaching hospital campus is discussed discussed in the light of the decline of the role of general physicians.

Australia

Generalized epilepsy with bilateral synchronous spike and wave discharge. New findings concerning its physiological mechanisms.

A hypothesis for the mechanism of generalized spike and wave discharge in human generalized epilepsy is proposed in the light of findings obtained in feline generalized penicillin epilepsy. It is postulated that generalized bilaterally synchronous spike and wave discharge depends upon a diffuse and relatively mild state of cortical hyperexcitability which increases the responsiveness of cortical neurons. Afferent thalamo-cortical volleys normally involved in the genesis of spindles and recruiting responses are most likely to precipitate spike and wave discharges under these conditions. The spike and wave pattern probably results from the activation of a recurrent intracortical inhibitory pathway which becomes activated when cortical neurons discharge in greater number and more repetitively than is normally the case. During spike and wave discharges a large number of neurons oscillate between short periods of excitation, corresponding to the spike, and longer periods of inhibition, corresponding to the slow wave component of the spike and wave complex. This disrupts the normal transactional processes of cortical neurons which are presumably responsible for mental activity, particularly for the close integration of perception, cognition and voluntary motor responsiveness. The degree of this interference varies greatly and in mild absence seizure it is not justified to speak of "loss of consciousness". The fundamental disturbance in absence seizures brought about by the generalized cortical spike and wave discharges is therefore better regarded as a "clouding of the mind". Loss of consciousness can be said to occur only when the interference with mental activity becomes particularly intense. Loss of consciousness in absence seizures can therefore not be used as an argument in favor of primary involvement of higher brain-stem mechanisms.

Animals

[Education and training of the general physician].

The authors of this paper, part of which was presented at the Seventh Pan American Conference on Medical Education (New Orleans, October 1978), recognize that training programs for general physicians should relate to the particular socioeconomic conditions and characteristics of the individual country and region. They propose that the general physician in developing countries be prepared in graduate courses to provide primary care, in order to give service immediately after graduation and because opportunities elsewhere for recent graduates are limited. After outlining new curriculum proposals for the general physicians, they argue against the establishment of departments of family medicine in Latin American medical schools. It is suggested that the general physician's training take place in outpatient clinics, health centers, and community and teaching hospitals, to make possible the integration of the medical education and medical care. Until such time when integration is achieved, the teaching hospital should afford medical education and care on a small scale, offering outpatient general clinics, nonspecialized services, and community health activities.

Brazil

Local versus general anesthesia: which is safer for performing suction curettage abortions?

The relative safety of suction curettage abortions performed with either local or general anesthesia has not been clearly established. To compare the safety of these two anesthetic techniques, we studied 36,430 women who received local anesthetics and 17,725 who received general anesthetics for this operation in the United States from 1971 through 1975. The aggregated major complication rates for the two groups were similar, but there were significant differences between local and general anesthesia for specific complications and treatments. Local anesthesia was associated with higher rates of febrile and convulsive morbidity; however, general anesthesia was associated with higher rates of hemorrhage, cervical injury, and uterine perforation. Both anesthetic techniques appear to be safe, with similar degrees of overall safety, although each is associated with a different spectrum of complications.

Abdomen

Influence of acoustic experience on the ontogeny of frequency generalization gradients in the chicken.

The role of auditory experience in the ontogeny of perceptual coding was investigated in hatching chickens. In Experiment 1, auditory frequency generalization gradients were determined by using a habituation-generalization paradigm and an orienting response. One-day and 3-4 day chicks were habituated to 800-Hz tones and then tested at five frequencies ranging from 800 to 1,000 Hz. One-day chicks displayed reliably flatter generalization gradients than 3-4-day chicks. In Experiment 2 an auditory deprivation method is described in which an ear impression compound was injected into the external ear. This method (a) is fully calibrated and provides approximately 40 dB of attenuation across a .125- to 4.0-kHz range, (b) appears to be fully reversible, and (c) is applicable prior to normal auditory experience as well as at subsequent stages. In Experiment 3, this method was used to investigate the effects of auditory deprivation on the "perceptual sharpening" described in Experimental 1. Chicks were deprived from Embryonic Day 18 1/2 to 3-4 days posthatch, at which time normal, deprived, and sham-operated chicks were tested as in Experiment 1. The generalization gradients of the deprived chicks were significantly flatter than those of the 3-4 day normal and sham-operated chicks and were similar to those of 1-day chicks. This effect cannot be attributed to (a) operative procedures, (b) changes in auditory thresholds, or (c) changes in response rate with age or condition. Thus the perceptual sharpening normally occurring between 1 and 3-4 days posthatch fails to occur during that time in the absence of a normal acoustic environment.

Acoustic Stimulation