No description available.

No description available.

The topic of this thesis is on how text mining could be used on patient-reported symptom descriptions, and how it could be used to aid doctors in their diagnostic process. Healthcare delivery today is struggling to provide care to remote settings, and costs are increasing together with the aging population. The aid provided to doctors from text mining on patient descriptions is unknown.Investigating if text mining can aid doctors by presenting additional information, based on what patients who write similar things to what their current patient is writing about, could be relevant to many settings in healthcare. It has the potential to improve the quality of care to remote settings and increase the number of patients treated on the limited resources available. In this work, patient texts were represented using the Bag-of-Words model and clustered using the k-means algorithm. The final clustering model used 41 clusters, and the ten most important words for the cluster centroids were used as representative words for the cluster. An experiment was then performed to gauge how the doctors were aided in their diagnostic process when patient texts were paired with these additional words. The results were that the words aided doctors in cases where the patient case was difficult and that the clustering algorithm can be used to provide the current patient with specific follow-up questions. / Ämnet för detta examensarbete är hur text mining kan användas på patientrapporterade symptombeskrivningar, och hur det kan användas för att hjälpa läkare att utföra den diagnostiska processen. Sjukvården har idag svårigheter med att leverera vård till avlägsna orter, och vårdkostnader ökar i och med en åldrande population. Idag är det okänt hur text mining skulle kunna hjälpa doktorer i sitt arbete. Att undersöka om läkare blir hjälpta av att presenteras med mer information, baserat på vad patienter som skriver liknande saker som deras nuvarande patient gör, kan vara relevant för flera olika områden av sjukvården. Text mining har potential att förbättra vårdkvaliten för patienter med låg tillgänglighet till vård, till exempel på grund av avstånd. I detta arbete representerades patienttexter med en Bag-of-Words modell, och klustrades med en k-means algoritm. Den slutgiltiga klustringsmodellen använde sig av 41 kluster, och de tio viktigaste orden för klustercentroider användes för att representera respektive kluster. Därefter genomfördes ett experiment för att se om och hur läkare blev behjälpta i sin diagnostiska process, om patienters texter presenterades med de tio orden från de kluster som texterna hörde till. Resultaten från experimentet var att orden hjälpte läkarna i de mer komplicerade patientfallen, och att klustringsalgoritmen skulle kunna användas för att ställa specifika följdfrågor till patienter.

Britain's Asians are a young population and their socio-economic status is low, with racial disadvantage in housing, employment, education and health. Research on their health has usually not been conducted in its socio-economic and demographic context and there is little on their use of primary care. Three studies were conducted to investigate their relationship with primary care in Bradford. A study of general practice attenders of white/British, Pakistani and Indian origin confirmed the demographic and socio-economic differences between the groups. The former had higher rates of alcohol and cigarette consumption. For Pakistanis and Indians, fluency and literacy in English was poor. Ethnic and linguistic match between doctor and patient was more important in patients' choice of doctor than the doctor's sex. Differential employment status of Asian and white/British accounted for some of the differences in health. A study of general practice attendance showed similar rates of surgery consultations between Asians and Non-Asians; the latter made greater use of domiciliary services. Both these studies were conducted in an inner Bradford health centre with an Asian male, a white male and a white female doctor. Bradford GPs were found to perceive that Asian patients made greater use of surgery and domiciliary consultations; attended more often for trivial complaints; and had lower compliance rates than Non-Asians. These perceptions were not supported by objective data. Better qualified GPs had a smaller, and Asian doctors had a greater proportion of Asian patients on their lists. Research, and action on Asians' health, needs to take account of their poorer socio-economic status. / Yorkshire Regional and Bradford District Health Authority.

“Dysautonomia” or a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, affects approximately 70 million children and adults worldwide. Despite this, a small fraction of studies focus on the experiences of children and teenagers' living with conditions related to dysautonomia. The aim of this study is thus to explore the experiences and perspective of teenagers living with dysautonomia, by focusing on how they describe their lives in relation to being chronically ill and how they view the relationships among themselves, their doctors and their peers. The study entails a social constructionist and an interpretative phenomenological approach, which focuses on the lived experiences of the teenagers. To collect the data, an email questionnaire1 was conducted with 16 teenagers from different parts of the world. The data was analyzed with the help of a thematic analysis. Seven themes were identified under my areas of interest; a regular day, relationships with peers and relationships with doctors. The results indicated that dysautonomia, similar to other chronic illnesses, was reducing life quality. The results also indicated that most days were spent trying to distract themselves from their illnesses. The participants described feelings related to uncertainty, fear, loneliness and grief. Difficulties remaining socially active and maintaining friendships were described by some of the participants. Relationships with peers were described as both supportive and unsupportive and were often described in terms of healthy and sick peer groups. The doctor-patient relationship was described in terms of good and bad qualities. Although all participants described feeling dismissed, belittled and accused of making their symptoms and illnesses up in their heads, some also described the opposite - the good and respectful listener, who valued the autonomy of the participants.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Die Feststellung der Todesursache und der Todesart ist eine ärztliche Aufgabe, welche medizinisch nicht trivial und gesellschaftlich bzw. rechtlich relevant ist. Dabei spielt die Unterscheidung zwischen einem natürlichen und einem nicht natürlichen Tod eine wichtige Rolle. Im folgenden Aufsatz soll vor dem Hintergrund dreier Fallvignetten aus einem hausärztlichen Versorgungskontext heraus das Themenfeld der Bewertung des Todes durch „freiwilligen Verzicht auf Essen und Trinken“ (im Folgenden: fVET) näher betrachtet werden. Die Autoren plädieren ausdrücklich für die Verwendung des Begriffes „freiwilliger Verzicht auf Essen und Trinken“. Dadurch soll deutlich gemacht werden, dass es eben nicht um den Verzicht auf ggf. über eine Sonde oder über einen venösen Gefäßzugang „künstlich“ zugeführte „Nahrung und Flüssigkeit“ als ärztliche Behandlungsmaßnahme geht 1.