Search

Copyright of Zentralblatt fuer Arbeitsmedizin, Arbeitsschutz und Ergonomie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This review explores the pivotal role that American sociology plays in addressing professional concerns, ethical practices, and its broader societal impact. It provides an in-depth examination of the historical evolution of the discipline, its involvement with public sociology, and its significant contributions to social discourse and policy formulation. The review meticulously addresses professional concerns such as the division of labor within the field, the increasing corporatization of research endeavours, and the integration of advanced technology into sociological research. Ethical practices are scrutinized as well, focusing on research ethics, data privacy, and the principles of responsible conduct in research. Moreover, the review underscores the profound societal impact of American sociology in various areas, including medical sociology, internet research methodologies, and social welfare institutions. It also looks ahead to future directions for the discipline, highlighting the importance of public engagement, the growth of digital sociology, fostering interdisciplinary collaborations, and the continuous refinement of ethical frameworks. Through this comprehensive examination, the review aims to illuminate the essential contributions of American sociology to both the academic community and society at large, while also suggesting pathways for its future development and increased relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic pain is a debilitating condition that profoundly and persistently affects individuals' lives. Managing chronic pain presents complex challenges, and a growing body of literature underscores the pivotal role of social support in its management and its implications for treatment and rehabilitation. Gaining an understanding of the multifaceted aspects of social support in chronic pain management can contribute to the development of more effective interventions and strategies to enhance the lives of those impacted by chronic pain. However, at present, systematic reviews that investigate the correlation between social support and chronic pain are lacking. This paper presents a scoping review of 56 relevant literature sources, with the aim of improving our comprehension of the relationship between chronic pain and social support. The review comprehensively examines common types of evidence, particularly on inconsistencies in research tools within this field of study and divergent concepts of social support related to chronic pain. The paper delves into the correlation model between social support and chronic pain, explores relevant mechanisms, and emphasizes the differences found among relevant studies. By synthesizing these findings, the review emphasizes potential areas for further research and exploration, facilitating future studies and the development of new approaches in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bundesgesundheitsblatt - Gesundheitsforschung - Gesundheitsschutz is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In a 2010 online Reuter's news article, Andrew Stern claimed that Tiger Woods placed the condition known as 'sex addiction' in the spotlight. Accordingly, this article discusses the extent to which 'sex addiction' is discursively produced within, and by, the media and explores the extent to which Stern's claim can be substantiated. This paper presents an analysis of articles retrieved from nytimes.com that were published between February 18th, 2009, and February 20th, 2011. It goes on to summarize four key findings: (1) 'sex addiction' was more directly and openly discussed as a concept in the year following Stern's article than it was in the year prior; (2) 'sex addiction' was discursively constructed as a male problem and regarded as an underlying reason for them to commit extramarital affairs; (3) in the year before Stern's article 'sex addiction' was discursively positioned as a social problem; and (4) in the year following Stern's article, 'sex addiction' was also discursively positioned as a medical problem. The paper concludes that the concept of 'sex addiction' is discursively constructed, and that Tiger Woods did, indeed, place a spotlight on the topic. As a result, the author argues that the media has a significant impact on the production, interpretation, and understanding of what many consider to be a sexual problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text classification is an important topic in natural language processing, with the development of social network, many question-and-answer pairs regarding health-care and medicine flood social platforms. It is of great social value to mine and classify medical text and provide targeted medical services for patients. The existing algorithms of text classification can deal with simple semantic text, especially in the field of Chinese medical text, the text structure is complex and includes a large number of medical nomenclature and professional terms, which are difficult for patients to understand. We propose a Chinese medical text classification model using a BERT-based Chinese text encoder by N-gram representations (ZEN) and capsule network, which represent feature uses the ZEN model and extract the features by capsule network, we also design a N-gram medical dictionary to enhance medical text representation and feature extraction. The experimental results show that the precision, recall and F1-score of our model are improved by 10.25%, 11.13% and 12.29%, respectively, compared with the baseline models in average, which proves that our model has better performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The minimum sum-of-squares clustering problem is a very important problem in data mining and machine learning with very many applications in, e.g., medicine or social sciences. However, it is known to be NP-hard in all relevant cases and to be notoriously hard to be solved to global optimality in practice. In this paper, we develop and test different tailored mixed-integer programming techniques to improve the performance of state-of-the-art MINLP solvers when applied to the problem—among them are cutting planes, propagation techniques, branching rules, or primal heuristics. Our extensive numerical study shows that our techniques significantly improve the performance of the open-source MINLP solver SCIP. Consequently, using our novel techniques, we can solve many instances that are not solvable with SCIP without our techniques and we obtain much smaller gaps for those instances that can still not be solved to global optimality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of social media in the healthcare community and the efforts of the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM) to engage with its audience through digital media. The JGIM Digital Media Team aims to create a diverse and inclusive community, disseminate published articles through accessible platforms, and support the growth of clinicians and scholars. They emphasize the importance of remaining on social media platforms despite controversies and using their digital media presence to foster a community of internists and disseminate best practices. [Extracted from the article]

Background: There is growing interest in incorporating social determinants of health (SDoH) data collection in inpatient hospital settings to inform patient care. However, there is limited information on this data collection and its use in inpatient general internal medicine (GIM). This scoping review sought to describe the current state of the literature on SDoH data collection and its application to patient care in inpatient GIM settings. Methods: English-language searches on MedLine, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL, Cochrane, and PsycINFO were conducted from 2000 to April 2021. Studies reporting systematic data collection or use of at least three SDoH, sociodemographic, or social needs variables in inpatient hospital GIM settings were included. Four independent reviewers screened abstracts, and two reviewers screened full-text articles. Results: A total of 8190 articles underwent abstract screening and eight were included. A range of SDoH tools were used, such as THRIVE, PRAPARE, WHO-Quality of Life, Measuring Health Equity, and a biopsychosocial framework. The most common SDoH were food security or malnutrition (n=7), followed by housing, transportation, employment, education, income, functional status and disability, and social support (n=5 each). Four of the eight studies applied the data to inform patient care, and three provided community resource referrals. Discussion: There is limited evidence to guide the collection and use of SDoH data in inpatient GIM settings. This review highlights the need for integrated care, the role of the electronic health record, and social history taking, all of which may benefit from more robust SDoH data collection. Future research should examine the feasibility and acceptability of SDoH integration in inpatient GIM settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal responsibility has emerged as an important element in many countries' public health planning, and has attracted substantial debate in public health discourse. Contemporary medical sociology typically resists such "responsibilization" as victim-blaming, by privileged elites, that obscures important structural factors and inequities. This paper, based primarily on a broad review of how contemporary Anglophone medical sociology literatures treat responsibility and blame, points out advantages of taking responsibility seriously, particularly from the individual's perspective. These advantages include: empowerment; responsibility-as-coping-mechanism; moral dignity; and the pragmatic logic of doing for oneself, rather than passively awaiting societal reforms. We also offer possible reasons why sociologists and their subjects view these issues so differently, and suggest some areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses the various topics within the issue, including Israeli sociology, ethnic identification, the sociology of peace, and responsibility in medical sociology.

Archaeologists studying inequality often study social patterns across a village, city, or region comparatively to assess difference based on identity traits, such as race, class, or gender (Flannery [10]; Robin [29]). The late 19th to early 20th centuries featured an escalation of scientific and medical attention to racial difference, same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity, and neurological variation, seeking biological origins and explanations for differences in behavior and appearance. Rather, these categories are created and enacted socially, with biological repercussions that come about through repeated exposure to discrimination, inadequate medical treatment, restricted labor opportunities, segregated housing, and other factors, leading to "a growing body of evidence [that] establishes the primacy of social inequalities in the origin and persistence of racial health disparities" (Gravlee [14]:47). The relationship between social inequalities and biological embodiment is dialectical and cyclical because "social inequalities shape the biology of racialized groups, and embodied inequalities perpetuate a racialized view of human biology" (Gravlee [14]:48). [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of TSG: Tijdschrift Voor Gezondheidswetenschappen is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: Rehabilitation professionals are faced with judging and describing the social-medicine status of their patients. Rehabilitation professionals must know the core concepts of acute unfitness for work, psychological capacities, and long-term work capacity. Acquiring and applying this knowledge, requires training. The research question is if and to what extent medical professionals and students' knowledge changes after social medicine training. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was carried out in the real-life context of social medicine training. Psychology students (n = 42), physicians/psychotherapists (i.e. state-licensed health professionals) (n = 44) and medical assistant professionals (n = 29) were trained. Their social medicine knowledge was measured before and after training by a 10-min expert-approved and content valid knowledge questionnaire. Three free-text questions had to be answered on the essential aspects of present and prognostic work ability and psychological capacities. Answers were rated for correctness by two experts. Paired t tests and variance analysis have been calculated for group comparisons. Results: All groups improved their social medicine knowledge from the pre- to the post-test. The students started with the lowest level of knowledge in the pre-test. After training, 69% of the physicians/psychotherapists and 56.8% of the medical assistant professionals, but only 7% of the students, obtained maximum scores for naming psychological capacities. Conclusions: Social medicine knowledge increased after a training course consisting of eight lessons. The increase was greater for medical assistant professionals and physicians/psychotherapists than for students. Social medicine training must be adjusted to the trainee groups' knowledge levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of social media in medicine offers unprecedented opportunities for social interaction. Activity on platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn plays crucial roles in various medical services, particularly regarding patients’ access to information and healthcare services, medical education, and professional networking. However, the integration of social media into healthcare is not challenge-free and has certain pitfalls. In this article, we address several critical issues that compromise the reliability and effectiveness of social media as a professional healthcare resource, particularly in the field of radiology. We discuss possible solutions and tips and tricks to facilitate the use of this valuable tool to our advantage and in a reliable manner.Graphical abstract: The use of social media in medicine offers unprecedented opportunities for social interaction. Activity on platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn plays crucial roles in various medical services, particularly regarding patients’ access to information and healthcare services, medical education, and professional networking. However, the integration of social media into healthcare is not challenge-free and has certain pitfalls. In this article, we address several critical issues that compromise the reliability and effectiveness of social media as a professional healthcare resource, particularly in the field of radiology. We discuss possible solutions and tips and tricks to facilitate the use of this valuable tool to our advantage and in a reliable manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Health equity curricula emphasizing critical pedagogy and centering perspectives of those with marginalized identities, both in curriculum design and execution, have yet to be described in interdisciplinary graduate medical education settings.The application of public health critical race praxis (PHCRP) in the redesign and evaluation of a social medicine immersion month (SMIM) curriculum.A mandatory, 4-week course within the Residency Program for Social Medicine in the Bronx, NY.First-year residents in internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, and clinical psychology fellows between 2019 and 2020.Residents and faculty underrepresented in medicine employed PHCRP to ground SMIM in critical pedagogy and structural competency with the goals of increasing critical consciousness, sensitizing trainees to structural barriers faced by patients, and promoting meaningful engagement in advocacy.SMIM was evaluated pre- and post-curriculum using a validated critical consciousness and intersectionality survey, with additional questions to assess competency and behaviors. Participants also provided course feedback. Participants demonstrated significant increases across all domains of the measure (Racism + 1.62 (p < .01), Classism + 1.62 (p < .05), Heterosexism + 1.06 (p < .05)). Participant feedback was positive.PHCRP is a valuable model for designing health equity curriculum. SMIM provides insights for incorporating this framework into GME curricula.Aim: Health equity curricula emphasizing critical pedagogy and centering perspectives of those with marginalized identities, both in curriculum design and execution, have yet to be described in interdisciplinary graduate medical education settings.The application of public health critical race praxis (PHCRP) in the redesign and evaluation of a social medicine immersion month (SMIM) curriculum.A mandatory, 4-week course within the Residency Program for Social Medicine in the Bronx, NY.First-year residents in internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, and clinical psychology fellows between 2019 and 2020.Residents and faculty underrepresented in medicine employed PHCRP to ground SMIM in critical pedagogy and structural competency with the goals of increasing critical consciousness, sensitizing trainees to structural barriers faced by patients, and promoting meaningful engagement in advocacy.SMIM was evaluated pre- and post-curriculum using a validated critical consciousness and intersectionality survey, with additional questions to assess competency and behaviors. Participants also provided course feedback. Participants demonstrated significant increases across all domains of the measure (Racism + 1.62 (p < .01), Classism + 1.62 (p < .05), Heterosexism + 1.06 (p < .05)). Participant feedback was positive.PHCRP is a valuable model for designing health equity curriculum. SMIM provides insights for incorporating this framework into GME curricula.Setting: Health equity curricula emphasizing critical pedagogy and centering perspectives of those with marginalized identities, both in curriculum design and execution, have yet to be described in interdisciplinary graduate medical education settings.The application of public health critical race praxis (PHCRP) in the redesign and evaluation of a social medicine immersion month (SMIM) curriculum.A mandatory, 4-week course within the Residency Program for Social Medicine in the Bronx, NY.First-year residents in internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, and clinical psychology fellows between 2019 and 2020.Residents and faculty underrepresented in medicine employed PHCRP to ground SMIM in critical pedagogy and structural competency with the goals of increasing critical consciousness, sensitizing trainees to structural barriers faced by patients, and promoting meaningful engagement in advocacy.SMIM was evaluated pre- and post-curriculum using a validated critical consciousness and intersectionality survey, with additional questions to assess competency and behaviors. Participants also provided course feedback. Participants demonstrated significant increases across all domains of the measure (Racism + 1.62 (p < .01), Classism + 1.62 (p < .05), Heterosexism + 1.06 (p < .05)). Participant feedback was positive.PHCRP is a valuable model for designing health equity curriculum. SMIM provides insights for incorporating this framework into GME curricula.Participants: Health equity curricula emphasizing critical pedagogy and centering perspectives of those with marginalized identities, both in curriculum design and execution, have yet to be described in interdisciplinary graduate medical education settings.The application of public health critical race praxis (PHCRP) in the redesign and evaluation of a social medicine immersion month (SMIM) curriculum.A mandatory, 4-week course within the Residency Program for Social Medicine in the Bronx, NY.First-year residents in internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, and clinical psychology fellows between 2019 and 2020.Residents and faculty underrepresented in medicine employed PHCRP to ground SMIM in critical pedagogy and structural competency with the goals of increasing critical consciousness, sensitizing trainees to structural barriers faced by patients, and promoting meaningful engagement in advocacy.SMIM was evaluated pre- and post-curriculum using a validated critical consciousness and intersectionality survey, with additional questions to assess competency and behaviors. Participants also provided course feedback. Participants demonstrated significant increases across all domains of the measure (Racism + 1.62 (p < .01), Classism + 1.62 (p < .05), Heterosexism + 1.06 (p < .05)). Participant feedback was positive.PHCRP is a valuable model for designing health equity curriculum. SMIM provides insights for incorporating this framework into GME curricula.Program Description: Health equity curricula emphasizing critical pedagogy and centering perspectives of those with marginalized identities, both in curriculum design and execution, have yet to be described in interdisciplinary graduate medical education settings.The application of public health critical race praxis (PHCRP) in the redesign and evaluation of a social medicine immersion month (SMIM) curriculum.A mandatory, 4-week course within the Residency Program for Social Medicine in the Bronx, NY.First-year residents in internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, and clinical psychology fellows between 2019 and 2020.Residents and faculty underrepresented in medicine employed PHCRP to ground SMIM in critical pedagogy and structural competency with the goals of increasing critical consciousness, sensitizing trainees to structural barriers faced by patients, and promoting meaningful engagement in advocacy.SMIM was evaluated pre- and post-curriculum using a validated critical consciousness and intersectionality survey, with additional questions to assess competency and behaviors. Participants also provided course feedback. Participants demonstrated significant increases across all domains of the measure (Racism + 1.62 (p < .01), Classism + 1.62 (p < .05), Heterosexism + 1.06 (p < .05)). Participant feedback was positive.PHCRP is a valuable model for designing health equity curriculum. SMIM provides insights for incorporating this framework into GME curricula.Program Evaluation: Health equity curricula emphasizing critical pedagogy and centering perspectives of those with marginalized identities, both in curriculum design and execution, have yet to be described in interdisciplinary graduate medical education settings.The application of public health critical race praxis (PHCRP) in the redesign and evaluation of a social medicine immersion month (SMIM) curriculum.A mandatory, 4-week course within the Residency Program for Social Medicine in the Bronx, NY.First-year residents in internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, and clinical psychology fellows between 2019 and 2020.Residents and faculty underrepresented in medicine employed PHCRP to ground SMIM in critical pedagogy and structural competency with the goals of increasing critical consciousness, sensitizing trainees to structural barriers faced by patients, and promoting meaningful engagement in advocacy.SMIM was evaluated pre- and post-curriculum using a validated critical consciousness and intersectionality survey, with additional questions to assess competency and behaviors. Participants also provided course feedback. Participants demonstrated significant increases across all domains of the measure (Racism + 1.62 (p < .01), Classism + 1.62 (p < .05), Heterosexism + 1.06 (p < .05)). Participant feedback was positive.PHCRP is a valuable model for designing health equity curriculum. SMIM provides insights for incorporating this framework into GME curricula.Discussion: Health equity curricula emphasizing critical pedagogy and centering perspectives of those with marginalized identities, both in curriculum design and execution, have yet to be described in interdisciplinary graduate medical education settings.The application of public health critical race praxis (PHCRP) in the redesign and evaluation of a social medicine immersion month (SMIM) curriculum.A mandatory, 4-week course within the Residency Program for Social Medicine in the Bronx, NY.First-year residents in internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, and clinical psychology fellows between 2019 and 2020.Residents and faculty underrepresented in medicine employed PHCRP to ground SMIM in critical pedagogy and structural competency with the goals of increasing critical consciousness, sensitizing trainees to structural barriers faced by patients, and promoting meaningful engagement in advocacy.SMIM was evaluated pre- and post-curriculum using a validated critical consciousness and intersectionality survey, with additional questions to assess competency and behaviors. Participants also provided course feedback. Participants demonstrated significant increases across all domains of the measure (Racism + 1.62 (p < .01), Classism + 1.62 (p < .05), Heterosexism + 1.06 (p < .05)). Participant feedback was positive.PHCRP is a valuable model for designing health equity curriculum. SMIM provides insights for incorporating this framework into GME curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social medicine education is a long-established field of study within medical education,1 implementation has historically been through elective coursework making integration, assessment, and evaluation challenging. The launch of the novel Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine Gateway curriculum, with guiding principles that required curriculum content to be integrated, learning-centered, sustainable, competency-based, and outcomes-oriented, supported the creation of the Health Equity and Justice (HEJ) curriculum. This innovative curriculum adhered to the guiding principles, addressed the current limitations in social medicine education, and allowed for the flexibility that social medicine education requires. Additionally, the Gateway HEJ curriculum presented an opportunity to explore novel ways of assessing medical students, as well as illuminating additional opportunities for faculty development to ensure fidelity to the HEJ content. This paper includes the process of development as well as the lessons learned, limitations, and future plans for iterative improvements to the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: International studies suggest an association between low social status and ethnicity on the one hand and the outcome of infections with SARS-CoV2 on the other hand. Corresponding studies from Germany are missing so far. Methods: All patients with symptomatic COVID-19 infection were retrospectively registered in 6 practices of a general practitioner quality circle and examined with regard to age, gender and migration background. The time course of the different pandemic waves (between March 2020 and January 2021) was observed, correlations between migration background and regional average income and incidence were calculated. Results: 448 symptomatic patients* were recorded. Practice incidence averaged 26.9/1,000 patients per quarter, age 42.4 years, female proportion 50.9%. 44.2% of the patients had a migration background. As with the incidence in practices, there was a wide variation among the practices. There was a highly significant correlation between regional average income and migration background on the one hand and practice incidence on the other. Conclusions: In the present retrospective survey, a strong association between average income and migration background with incidence of symptomatic COVID-19 disease was also documented in Germany. Consequently, specific interventions in the affected neighborhoods are needed to reduce the burden of disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the historiography of depression, with an eye to illuminating wider issues in the social study of psychiatry and depression. It argues that the advent of Prozac caused notable shifts in how scholars in the looked at depression. Far from solidifying the medical status of depression and psychiatry's treatment of it, the spread of pill-oriented depression treatment strengthened social researchers' emphasis on psychiatry's social nature. The article further argues that a depiction of psychiatry as mainly a social phenomenon both unduly diminishes its status as medicine, and implicitly underestimates the social in the rest of medicine. This matters if people can benefit from psychiatric treatment. Put another way, if people taking psychiatric medications are indeed ill, and taking medicines that can help them, social analysis should acknowledge this, even as it rightly investigates psychiatry as embedded in social and cultural contexts, as all of medicine is. Doing so means treating psychiatry, whatever its limitations, as a kind of medicine, not as a special case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how trans health was negotiated on the margins of psychiatry from the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this period, a new model of medical transition was established for trans people in Norway. Psychiatrists and other medical doctors as well as psychologists and social workers with a special interest and training in social medicine created a new diagnostic and therapeutic regime in which the social aspects of transitioning took center stage. The article situates this regime in a long Norwegian tradition of social medicine, including the important political role of social medicine in the creation of the postwar welfare state and its scope of addressing and changing the societal structures involved in disease. By using archival material, medical records and oral history interviews with former patients and health professionals, I demonstrate how social aspects not only underpinned diagnostic evaluations but were an integral component of the entire therapeutic regime. Sex reassignment became an integrative way of imagining and practicing psychiatry as social medicine. The article specifically unpacks the social element of these diagnostic and therapeutic approaches in trans medicine. Because the locus of intervention and treatment remained the individual, an approach with subversive potential ended up reproducing the norms that caused illness in the first place: "the social" became a conformist tool to help the patient integrate, adjust to and transform the pathology-producing forces of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the colonial experience was never just "out there" but was a constitutive feature of the global development of psychiatry and, indeed, of social medicine itself. I show how regional knowledge about psychiatry, produced in scientific exchanges across colonial Southeast Asia over four decades and culminating with the 1937 Bandung Conference, became part of new international approaches to health care in rural areas, and later, in developing nations. In particular, I discuss how the embrace of the agricultural colony as a solution to the problem of asylum overcrowding occurred at the same moment that colonial public health experts and officials were moving away from expensive, technocratic fixes to address indigenous health needs. Yet in the search for alternatives to institutionalized care, including forms of family and community support, colonial psychiatrists were increasingly drawn into unpredictable and unwieldy networks of care and economy. Drawing on research from Vietnam, this paper decenters the asylum so as to recast the history of colonial and postcolonial psychiatry as integral to the history of social medicine and global health. The paper then returns to Bandung in 1955, the site of another famous meeting in the history of Third World solidarity, to consider how the embrace of the "Bandung spirit" may provide new avenues for decolonizing the history of colonial and postcolonial psychiatry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Novels and autopathographies that employ cancer as a central theme offer a wealth of opportunities for researching the way patients with cancer make sense of their illness and its treatment. Such literatures can also inform clinical care, because they can support patients in living with their illness. The use of novels and autopathographies for research and care in persons with cancer fits within the framework of 'Health Humanities', the interdisciplinary field where medicine and social science meet. This paper presents a concise overview of novels and autopathographies that explore cancer as their theme. Methods: Literature searches were conducted using PubMed, major scientific journals of medicine and clinical oncology, and databases in the Health Humanities. Searches focused on novels and autopathographies where cancer is the central theme, which are available in English, and which can be considered to represent 'high literature'. Results: Twenty-nine books were identified. The majority of the books were written originally in English, and breast cancer and lung cancer were the most frequently discussed types of cancer. The core themes identified were giving meaning to illness; coping with medical treatment; and the psychological and social consequences of illness. Conclusion: Novels and autopathographies about cancer represent an innovative base for research on living with cancer and offer rich data on how people make sense of cancer and its medical treatment. Clinical implications of this review pertain to interventions based on bibliotherapy and expressive writing. Novels and autopathographies are just part of the Health Humanities context: a wide range of art genres may prove helpful in improving the quality of life of persons with cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite social care interventions gaining traction in the US healthcare sector in recent years, the scaling of healthcare practices to address social adversity and coordinate care across sectors has been modest. Against this backdrop, the coronavirus pandemic arrived, which re-emphasized the interdependence of the health and social care sectors and motivated health systems to scale tools for identifying and addressing social needs. A framework on integrating social care into health care delivery developed by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine provides a useful organizing tool to understand the social care integration innovations spurred by COVID-19, including novel approaches to social risk screening and social care interventions. As the effects of the pandemic are likely to exacerbate socioeconomic barriers to health, it is an appropriate time to apply lessons learned during the recent months to re-evaluate efforts to strengthen, scale, and sustain the health care sector's social care activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imperative for all healthcare professionals to partake in quality improvement (QI) has resulted in the development of QI education programs with participants from different professional backgrounds. However, there is limited empirical and theoretical examination as to why, when and how interprofessional and multiprofessional education occurs in QI and the outcomes of these approaches. This paper reports on a qualitative collective case study of interprofessional and multiprofessional education in three longitudinal QI education programs. We conducted 58 interviews with learners, QI project coaches, program directors and institutional leads and 135 h of observations of in-class education sessions, and collected relevant documents such as course syllabi and handouts. We used an interpretive thematic analysis using a conventional and directed content analysis approach. In the directed content approach, we used sociology of professions theory with particular attention to professional socialization, hierarchies and boundaries in QI, to understand the ways in which individuals' professional backgrounds informed the planning and experiences of the QI education programs. Findings demonstrated that both interprofessional and multiprofessional education approaches were being used to achieve different education objectives. While each approach demonstrated positive learning and practice outcomes, tensions related to the different ways in which professional groups are engaging in QI, power dynamics between professional groups, and disconnects between curricula and practice existed. Further conceptual clarity is essential for a more informed discussion about interprofessional and multiprofessional education approaches in QI and explicit attention is needed to professional processes and tensions, to optimize the impact of education on practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data visualizations are a valuable tool used during both statistical analysis and the interpretation of results as they graphically reveal useful information about the structure, properties and relationships between variables, which may otherwise be concealed in tabulated data. In disciplines like medicine and the social sciences, where collected data include sensitive information about study participants, the sharing and publication of individual-level records is controlled by data protection laws and ethico-legal norms. Thus, as data visualizations – such as graphs and plots – may be linked to other released information and used to identify study participants and their personal attributes, their creation is often prohibited by the terms of data use. These restrictions are enforced to reduce the risk of breaching data subject confidentiality, however they limit analysts from displaying useful descriptive plots for their research features and findings. Here we propose the use of anonymization techniques to generate privacy-preserving visualizations that retain the statistical properties of the underlying data while still adhering to strict data disclosure rules. We demonstrate the use of (i) the well-known k-anonymization process which preserves privacy by reducing the granularity of the data using suppression and generalization, (ii) a novel deterministic approach that replaces individual-level observations with the centroids of each k nearest neighbours, and (iii) a probabilistic procedure that perturbs individual attributes with the addition of random stochastic noise. We apply the proposed methods to generate privacy-preserving data visualizations for exploratory data analysis and inferential regression plot diagnostics, and we discuss their strengths and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Point process models have been extensively used in many areas of science and engineering, from quantitative sociology to medical imaging. Computing the maximum likelihood estimator of a point process model often leads to a convex optimization problem displaying a challenging feature, namely the lack of Lipschitz-continuity of the objective function. This feature can be a barrier to the application of common first order convex optimization methods. We present an approach where the estimation of a point process model is framed as a saddle point problem instead. This formulation allows us to develop Mirror Prox algorithms to efficiently solve the saddle point problem. We introduce a general Mirror Prox algorithm, as well as a variant appropriate for large-scale problems, and establish worst-case complexity guarantees for both algorithms. We illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithms for point process estimation on real datasets from medical imaging, social networks, and recommender systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of race have traditionally been addressed in medical school curricula in a didactic manner. However, medical school curricula often lack adequate opportunity for the application of learning material relating to race and culture. When confronted with acts of racism in clinical settings, students are left unprepared to respond appropriately and effectively. Forum Theatre offers a dynamic platform by which participants are empowered to actively engage with and become part of the performance. When used in an educational context, Forum Theatre can be a powerful tool for students to interact with a wide variety of social issues. This paper describes the process by which one medical school designed a workshop in the Forum Theatre style to equip students to respond to racism observed in clinical settings. Based on real student experiences, the Responding to Racism in the Clinical Setting workshop was designed to give students an opportunity to combine cultural humility, communication theory and conflict resolution skills in order to prepare for interactions in clinical stages of medical education. As a result of workshop evaluations, surveys, and written reflections, the authors propose that Forum Theatre is a novel teaching modality for incorporating issues of race and culture into medical curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Der Gynäkologe is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Social Medicine's emphasis on care would have taken Community Psychiatry into a different place than Public Health's emphasis on prevention and cost containment. It would take a very long essay indeed to respond to the many important questions raised by the contributors to this thought-igniting special issue of CMP: "Psychiatry as Social Medicine". As a consultation-liaison psychiatrist, I saw Psychiatry as an integral part of Medicine; but I also recognized that Psychiatry represented a broad field in itself (Mental Health) which did not always sit comfortably in the Medicine of the 1970s. [Extracted from the article]

Drawing on a historical ethnography conducted in Southern Brazil, this article explores how public health programs for adolescent reproductive and mental health have emerged in Brazil and begun to intersect with the growing field of "global mental health" (GMH). The story I recount begins not in the 2010s with the rapid rise of expert interest in adolescent health within GMH, but in the 1990s, the decade when young teens in Brazil were first coming into contact with practices and approaches in research, schools and clinics that have both underpinned and critiqued the production of an adolescent mental and reproductive health sub-field. In parsing what young women's encounters with the then newly-emerging questionnaires, measurement tools, school-based programs and clinical practices came to mean to them, I use a genealogical approach to consider how histories of education reform, population control, psychoanalysis, social medicine, the transition to democracy, feminism and grass-roots politics all entered the fold, shaping the way adolescent sex-and-psyche materialized as a contested object of expertise. I end by exploring what this case can teach global mental health advocates and social theorists about practices of critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Originally premiering in 1963, the BBC television series Doctor Who has long been criticized for essentializing colonial scenarios and failing to address issues of race and post-colonial realities. As a white male with the privilege to explore time and space, the titular Doctor stands in contrast to his human companion Martha Jones, a Black woman who represents the first and only main character in the show to be a medical professional of color. The relationship between the Doctor and Martha inherently demands an exploration of the meaning of doctorhood. In studying the ways in which these characters embody the idea of "doctor," we examine how race structures their approach to medicine, heroism, and colonialism. Whereas the Doctor personifies the figure of colonizer and post-colonial white savior, Martha emerges as a radical figure whose doctorhood potentially challenges and dismantles the colonial history of medicine. Through Afrofuturist and Afrosurrealist lenses, Martha represents a potentially subversive figure who offers a visionary medicine rooted in social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In medicine and the social sciences, researchers often measure only a handful of variables simultaneously. The underlying assumption behind this methodology is that combining the results of dozens of smaller studies can, in principle, yield as much information as one large study, in which dozens of variables are measured simultaneously. Mayo-Wilson (Philos Sci 78(5):864–874, 2011, Br J Philos Sci 65(2):213–249, 2013. 10.1093/bjps/axs030) shows that assumption is false when causal theories are inferred from observational data. This paper extends Mayo-Wilson's results to cases in which experimental data is available. I prove several new theorems that show that, as the number of variables under investigation grows, experiments do not improve, in the worst-case, one's ability to identify the true causal model if one can measure only a few variables at a time. However, stronger statistical assumptions (e.g., Gaussianity) significantly aid causal discovery in piecemeal inquiry, even if such assumptions are unhelpful when all variables can be measured simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dr. Lothar and Martin Beyer Foundation announces the German Research Prize for General Medicine 2023, supported by the German Society of General Medicine and Family Medicine. The prize is awarded for research work that improves patient care in general medical practices. The application deadline is April 30, 2023, and the first prize is endowed with €10,000. The DEGAM clarifies that their S3 guideline does not contain therapy recommendations for herbal or other cough syrups. The misleading advertising by Klosterfrau Healthcare Group and Bionorica with the seal "Guideline Recommendation of the DEGAM" is clarified by the DEGAM. The German Society for Social Medicine and Prevention is a new partner of the DEGAM and promotes the formation of interdisciplinary networks. The Dr. Lothar and Martin Beyer Foundation was established in memory of Dr. Lothar Beyer (1955-2005) and Martin Beyer (1957-2021) and is managed by the German Foundation for General Medicine and Family Medicine. The prize committee makes final decisions and there is no legal recourse. For more information about the DGSMP, please visit www.dgsmp.de. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, the author explores a model of alternative medical education being pioneered at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. The five-year Global Health Fieldwork Fellowship (GHFF) track allows two students per year to complete an extra year of medical education while living and working in a free rural clinic in the jungle lowlands of Bolivia. This alternative curricular track is unique among other existing models in that it is (a) longitudinally immersive for at least one full additional year of medical education, (b) grounded in clinical and service learning, and (c) heavily focused upon global health and the social components of medicine. Studies have shown that both longitudinal alternative medical curricular tracks and short-term global health electives have long-term benefits upon the professional development of participants, suggesting that the GHFF is likely to do the same. The author also argues that the GHFF is an advantageous model of global health education compared to standard offerings and provides a unique curricular model by which to foster the development of social values—such as professionalism, advocacy, and social justice—that are widely considered lacking in today’s medical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of fundamental causes in medical sociology identifies socioeconomic status and racism as fundamental causes of disease and health disparities. We draw on this theory to argue that socioeconomic status and racism are also fundamental causes of violent and property crime. In line with the theory, we argue that criminology should pay increased attention to socioeconomic status and racism for the most far-reaching reductions in street criminality to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the empirical validity of the material deprivation indices (MDIs) using a partial criterion variable, namely UHCNIR (unmet health care need due to inadequate resources). This alternative approach helps to assess absolute validity (Type I and II errors) and sources of error in the measurement of poverty for a specific aspect of poverty (in this case inability to receive adequate health care due to affordability problems). A simple mismatch analysis identifies a sizable group, around 1% of the adult EU population, missed by MDIs despite being in UHCNIR. A majority of this 1% experiences not only UHCNIR but also multiple other deprivations, commonly reports having some difficulties making ends meet, and prevalently has a disability or a chronic health problem. The analysis reveals that MDIs miss specifically those 'unhealthy poor' since these measures do not include a relevant item, and thus cannot adjust for different needs and costs in health care and account for the distinct poverty experiences of these people. Therefore, the main methodological assumption of MDIs, identifying the people in poverty with only a limited set of key deprivation indicators is not supported by this empirical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The report of the Social Health Working Group 2022 provides information on the activities and projects of the group. Online forums were held on various topics such as relationship-oriented general medicine and social inequality. The working group also participates in the development of guidelines and offers further training in psychosomatic primary care. Furthermore, the working group is involved in promoting social health in primary care and is a member of the Special Interest Group Social Prescribing. A workshop on social health will be offered at the DEGAM Congress. [Extracted from the article]

Drawing on clinical data from 15 months of on-site participant observation in the only public psychiatric hospital in the state of Puebla, Mexico, this article advances our understanding of globalization in relation to psychiatry. I challenge the construction of psychiatry as only treating the individual patient and provide grounded doctor-patient-family member interaction in a Mexican psychiatric clinic in order to review what happens when doctors cannot interact with patients as atomized individuals even though in theory they are trained to think of patients that way. Challenged by severe structural constraints and bolstered by lessons from other nations' efforts at deinstitutionalization, psychiatrists in Puebla push to keep patients out of the inpatient wards and in their respective communities. To this end, psychiatrists call upon co-present kin who are identified both as the customer and part of the caretaking system outside the clinic. This modification to the visit structure changes the dynamic and content of clinical visits while doctors seamlessly respond to unspoken beliefs and values that are central to local life, ultimately showing that efforts to define a "global psychiatry" informed by global policy will fail because it cannot exist in a uniform way-interpersonal interaction and personal experience matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recently published data indicate increasing incidence of colorectal adenocarcinoma (CRC) in young-onset (<50 years) patients.Aims: This study examines racial disparities in presentation and survival times among non-Hispanic Blacks (NHB) and Hispanics compared with non-Hispanic Whites (NHW).Methods: A retrospective single-center cohort study was conducted from 2004 through 2014 using 96 patient medical charts with a diagnosis of young-onset CRC. Age, gender, primary site, and histological stage at the time of diagnosis were assessed for survival probabilities by racial group over a minimum follow-up period of 5 years.Results: Among subjects with CRC diagnosis before 50 years of age, the majority of subjects were between 40 and 50 years, with CRC presentation occurring among this age group for 51 (79.7%) of NHW, 18 (81.8%) of NHB, and 5 (50.0%) of Hispanics. The majority of all patients presented with advanced stages of CRC (31.3% with stage III and 27.1% with stage IV). NHB exhibited statistically significantly worse survival compared to NHW (adjusted hazard ratio for death = 2.09; 95% confidence interval 1.14-3.84; P = 0.02). A possible trend of worse survival was identified for Hispanics compared to NHW, but this group was low in numbers and results were not statistically significant.Conclusion: Disparities between racial groups among young-onset CRC cases were identified in overall survival and reflect growing concern in rising incidence and differentiated care management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors focus on the philosophy of sex and gender in gender medicine as well as gender and sex stereotypes and biases that obstruct medical progress.

Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771) was an Italian anatomist who introduced the anatomo-clinical concept in medicine and established anatomy as the instrument to identify the seat and etiology of any disease. He was professor of anatomy at the prestigious University of Padua for more than 50 years. His first documented text in anatomy, Adversaria Anatomica was published in three volumes between 1706 and 1719. His accurate anatomical descriptions of human organs enhanced his reputation as the most famous anatomist of Europe during that period. Morgagni published the most important work of his life, the masterpiece in pathologic anatomy, De Sedibus, in 1761. The text is based on his pathologic observations from about 700 autopsy dissections of patients whom he had treated during their lifetime. De Sedibus provides the reader with a precise correlation between the anatomo-pathologic findings at post-mortem and the clinical symptoms of a disease observed during a lifetime. Morgagni's ability to integrate and synthesize information set him apart from his contemporaries, and his anatomo-clinical method was a major breakthrough in the history of medicine as it helped physicians to diagnose a disease, analyse the prognosis of that disease and prepare a management protocol for the same. His achievements led to the emergence of pathologic anatomy as an exact science and with him began modern medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proper management of healthcare waste is a critical concern in many countries of the world. Rapid urbanization and population growth rates pose serious challenges to healthcare waste management infrastructure in such countries. This study was aimed at assessing the situation of hospital waste management in a major city of Pakistan. Simple random sampling was used to select 12 government and private hospitals in the city. Field visits, physical measurements, and questionnaire survey method were used for data collection. Information was obtained regarding hospital waste generation, segregation, collection, storage, transportation, and disposal. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to classify the hospitals on the basis of their relative waste management efficiencies. The weighted average total waste generation at the surveyed hospitals was discovered to be 1.53 kg/patient/day of which 75.15% consisted of general waste and the remaining consisted of biomedical waste. Of the total waste, 24.54% came from the public hospital and the remaining came from the private hospitals. DEA showed that seven of the surveyed hospitals had scale or pure technical inefficiencies in their waste management activities. The public hospital was relatively less efficient than most of the private hospitals in these activities. Results of the questionnaire survey showed that none of the surveyed hospitals was carrying out waste management in strict compliance with government regulations. Moreover, hospital staff at all the surveyed hospitals had low level of knowledge regarding safe hospital waste management practices. The current situation should be rectified in order to avoid environmental and epidemiological risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journal for general medicine reports on the establishment of a new professional society at the DEGAM headquarters. The German Society for Social Medicine and Prevention (DGSMP) is now a partner of DEGAM and promotes research, teaching, and practice in social medicine and prevention. The DGSMP has around 500 members from the health sciences, medicine, and social sciences. The office community of DEGAM also includes the German Network for Evidence-Based Medicine (EbM Network), the Society for Higher Education in General Medicine (GHA), and the Practice Seal Foundation. [Extracted from the article]

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is of great importance not only in children but also in adults; however, despite extensive research there are still many unsolved questions with respect to the diagnosis. Patients not only suffer from attention deficits and hyperactivity but also a variety of other problems, such as dyspraxia, problems with stimulus discrimination, dysgrammatism, legasthenia, or motor coordination problems. Furthermore, there are also psychopathological disorders, such as problems with memory, formal thinking, emotional modulation, drive and vegetative stability, in the sense of a psycho-organic syndrome. Such syndromes have long been known in psychiatry under terms, such as complex capacity disorders, minimal cerebral dysfunction (MCD), minimal brain dysfunction (MBD), mild psycho-organic syndrome, psycho-organic axis syndrome, mild cognitive impairment, developmental disorder and developmental biological syndrome. Etiological data with respect to genetics and early childhood brain trauma support the notion of a psychobiological disorder for complex cerebral dysfunction in the sense of a psycho-organic syndrome. Depending on the individual life and work situation, these additional symptoms of ADHD are in many cases of greater relevance for life adjustment than the core symptoms, depending on the individual life and work situations. The concept of minimal cerebral dysfunction describes the ADHD problem better and has a direct bearing on the diagnosis, therapy and sociomedical care of the patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blended courses supported by digital technology (bLearning) and competency-based medical education can be found in different university curricular reform initiatives around the world. Today, it is essential to implement new technologies and teaching methods that are flexible and encourage students to acquire the necessary professional skills. This article describes how using the bLearning format transformed the Social Medicine course for second-year medical students at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), particularly their ability to achieve target competencies. A qualitative case study was carried out to explore the curriculum structure, training and skills, educational model and learning environments used during the course. We discuss the methods used, the results achieved, and the challenges encountered during the implementation process. Findings show that bLearning both facilitated the transformation of the course design and promoted flexibility and autonomy in students' learning process. Additionally, the new format facilitated the development of various competencies including: cognitive, technical and procedural, integrative and communicative, reflection, and professional ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A widely used Chinese cardiotonic proprietary medicine, compound Danshen dripping pills (CDDP, Fufang Danshen Diwan) has also begun to be used for treatment of vascular dementia (VaD). We tried to explore the mechanism of CDDP action in this case. A VaD experimental model was built in rats by bilateral ligation of the common carotid arteries. The cognitive ability of experimental animals was evaluated in the Morris water maze test. Synaptic ultrastructural changes in the hippocampus were detected by transmission electron microscopy; expression of PSD-95 mRNA in the hippocampus was examined using hybridization in situ. The latter index (mRNA expression) in the VaD group was significantly lower than those in the CDDP and sham-operated groups ( P < 0.05). CDDP treatment considerably improved disturbed ultrastructural synaptic characteristics in the hippocampus of VaD rats. The mean escape latency in the Morris water maze test was significantly shorter in CDDP-treated VaD rats, compared with that those of the VaD group ( P < 0.05). In the CDDP group compared to the VaD one, escape strategies improved from edge and random searches to more linear swim pathway ( P < 0.05). Thus, decreasing expression of PSD-95 plays an important role in the pathogenesis of VaD. CDDP treatment improves the learning and memory ability of VaD rats by improving neural synaptic ultrastructural characteristics and increasing expression of PSD-95 mRNA in the hippocampus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Confirmatory factory analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) are increasingly used in social pharmacy research. One of the key benefits of CFA is that it allows researchers to provide evidence for the validity of internal factor structure of measurement scales. In particular, CFA can be used to provide evidence for the validity of the assertion that a hypothesized multi-dimensional scale discriminates between sub-scales. Aim This manuscript aims to provide guidance for researchers who wish to use CFA to provide evidence for the internal factor structure of measurement scales. Methods The manuscript places discriminant validity in the context of providing overall validity evidence for measurement scales. Four examples from the recent social pharmacy literature are used to critically examine the various methods which are used to establish discriminant validity. Using a hypothetical scenario, the manuscript demonstrates how commonly used output from CFA computer programs can be used to provide evidence for separateness of sub-scales within a multi-dimensional scale. Conclusion The manuscript concludes with recommendations for the conduct and reporting of studies which use CFA to provide evidence of internal factor structure of measurement scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurement feedback systems (MFSs) can help improve clinical outcomes by enhancing clinical decision-making. Unfortunately, limited information exists to guide the use and interpretation of data from MFSs. This study examined the amount of data that would provide a reasonable and reliable prediction of a client's rate of symptomatology in order to help inform clinical decision-making processes. Results showed that use of more data predicted greater levels of accuracy. However, there were diminishing returns on the ability for additional data to improve predictive accuracy. Findings inform efforts to develop guidelines on the interpretation of data from MFSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Return to work (RTW) is a pivotal goal of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) in patients after acute cardiac event. We aimed to evaluate cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPX) parameters as predictors for RTW at discharge after CR. Methods: We analyzed data from a registry of 489 working-age patients (51.5 ± 6.9 years, 87.9 % men) who had undergone inpatient CR predominantly after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI 62.6 %), coronary artery bypass graft (CABG 17.2 %), or heart valve replacement (9.0 %). Sociodemographic and clinical parameters, noninvasive cardiac diagnostic (2D echo, exercise ECG, 6MWT) and psychodiagnostic screening data, as well as CPX findings, were merged with RTW data from the German statutory pension insurance program and analyzed for prognostic ability. Results: During a mean follow-up of 26.5 ± 11.9 months, 373 (76.3 %) patients returned to work, 116 (23.7 %) did not, and 60 (12.3 %) retired. After adjustment for covariates, elective CABG (HR 0.68, 95 % CI 0.47-0.98; p = 0.036) and work intensity (per level HR 0.83, 95 % CI 0.73-0.93; p = 0.002) were negatively associated with the probability of RTW. Exercise capacity in CPX (in Watts) and the VE/ VCO-slope had independent prognostic significance for RTW. A higher work load increased (HR 1.17, 95 % CI 1.02-1.35; p = 0.028) the probability of RTW, while a higher VE/ VCO slope decreased (HR 0.85, 95 % CI 0.76-0.96; p = 0.009) it. CPX also had prognostic value for retirement: the likelihood of retirement decreased with increasing exercise capacity (HR 0.50, 95 % CI 0.30-0.82; p = 0.006). Conclusion: CPX is a valid tool for assessing patients' ability to return to work. Therefore, it may be an essential part of functional assessment during CR for predicting participation in employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]