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Objective: To examine public opinions of surgery in older adults., Background: Increasing numbers of older adults are undergoing surgery. National healthcare organizations recognize the increased risks of postoperative complications and mortality in the older surgical population and have made efforts to improve the care of older adults undergoing surgery through hospital-level programs. However, limited research has explored the opinions and responses of the wider U.S. public regarding surgery in older adults., Methods: We performed a qualitative, thematic analysis of reader comments posted in response to online newspaper articles relating to surgery in older adults. Articles were published in 2019-2020 and targeted for a popular press audience., Results: Nine hundred eight reader comments posted in response to 6 articles relating to surgery in older adults were identified. Articles were published in online editions of print newspapers with a digital circulation between 1.3 and 5.7 million subscribers. Three themes were identified: (1) wariness/distrust towards healthcare: including general distrust of medicine and distrust of surgery, (2) problems experienced: ineffective communication and unrealistic expectations, and (3) recommended solutions: the need for multidisciplinary teams and patient-centered communication., Conclusions: Overall, the public viewed surgery in older adults with wariness/distrust due to ineffective communication and unrealistic expectations. Specialized surgical care tailored to the unique needs of older adults is needed. The public perspective suggests that U.S. health systems should strongly consider adopting programs that provide care to meet the unique needs of older adults undergoing surgery and ultimately improve both patient outcomes and their surgical experience., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: In 2015, ASCO established a program designed to support medical interest in cancer-related careers: Oncology Student Interest Groups (OSIGs). The purpose of this study was to describe the characteristics of current student leaders of ASCO-sponsored OSIGs and their perceptions of cancer-related careers., Methods: We reviewed the list of all ASCO-sponsored OSIGs between 2015 and 2021. For this study, we focused on OSIGs that were sponsored during the 2019-2020 academic year. All student leaders of the 89 OSIGs active in that academic year were invited to participate., Results: The number of groups has more than tripled in the 6 years since the program's inception. The number of international groups has increased to become almost one fifth of all OSIGs; however, the range of countries represented remains limited. The majority of OSIG leaders were female. Eighty two percent of OSIGs were returning members, with most of their leaders being registered ASCO student members. Almost all participants reported an interest in pursuing a cancer-related specialty. Only a minority (14.8%) reported having a family member working in a cancer-related career. However, 85% reported having experience with a cancer diagnosis in their family. The majority of the respondents had a favorable perception of medical oncology as a specialty. Participants reported the highest levels of interest in medical oncology and pediatric oncology., Conclusion: The number of ASCO-sponsored OSIGs has steadily increased since the creation of the program. Most participants reported an interest in pursuing a cancer-related career. To our knowledge, this study is the first to provide insights into the makeup of this program around the world. Additional efforts are needed to increase the global reach of the program, particularly in low-income countries., Competing Interests: Roberto Leon-FerreConsulting or Advisory Role: AstraZeneca (I)No other potential conflicts of interest were reported.

Background: In the current era of widespread access to the internet, we can monitor public interest in a topic via information-targeted web browsing. We sought to provide direct proof of the global population's altered use of Wikipedia medical knowledge resulting from the new COVID-19 pandemic and related global restrictions., Objective: We aimed to identify temporal search trends and quantify changes in access to Wikipedia Medicine Project articles that were related to the COVID-19 pandemic., Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of medical articles across nine language versions of Wikipedia and country-specific statistics for registered COVID-19 deaths. The observed patterns were compared to a forecast model of Wikipedia use, which was trained on data from 2015 to 2019. The model comprehensively analyzed specific articles and similarities between access count data from before (ie, several years prior) and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wikipedia articles that were linked to those directly associated with the pandemic were evaluated in terms of degrees of separation and analyzed to identify similarities in access counts. We assessed the correlation between article access counts and the number of diagnosed COVID-19 cases and deaths to identify factors that drove interest in these articles and shifts in public interest during the subsequent phases of the pandemic., Results: We observed a significant (P<.001) increase in the number of entries on Wikipedia medical articles during the pandemic period. The increased interest in COVID-19-related articles temporally correlated with the number of global COVID-19 deaths and consistently correlated with the number of region-specific COVID-19 deaths. Articles with low degrees of separation were significantly similar (P<.001) in terms of access patterns that were indicative of information-seeking patterns., Conclusions: The analysis of Wikipedia medical article popularity could be a viable method for epidemiologic surveillance, as it provides important information about the reasons behind public attention and factors that sustain public interest in the long term. Moreover, Wikipedia users can potentially be directed to credible and valuable information sources that are linked with the most prominent articles., (©Jędrzej Chrzanowski, Julia Sołek, Dariusz Jemielniak, Dariusz Jemielniak. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 12.04.2021.)

Biobanks are considered to be important resources of Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine allowing the clarification of relevant disease mechanisms and the improvement of the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of both pediatric and adult cardiovascular diseases. To successfully establish a cardiovascular biobank, it is important to consider the public opinion and views on it and the factors involved in the willingness of the public to participate in the donation of genetic material. The literature was systematically reviewed to identify the attitude and willingness of patients affected by congenital and acquired heart disease to participate in biobanking research. Six relevant studies were identified in which it was indicated that psychosocial and demographic characteristics, as well as the patient's medical condition, could influence patient and family members' attitudes and willingness to participate in research. In both congenital and acquired heart diseases, participation in biobank research activities was higher if patients and their families were approached when hospitalized, but not during the acute moment of their illness. Other quantitative and qualitative studies are required to improve patient and family participation in these research initiatives., (Copyright 2020 Biolife Sas. www.biolifesas.org.)

Objective: To understand better the public perception and comprehension of medical technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic surgery. In addition to this, to identify sensitivity to their use to ensure acceptability and quality of counseling. Subjects and Methods: A survey was conducted on a convenience sample of visitors to the MN Minnesota State Fair ( n  = 264). Participants were randomized to receive one of two similar surveys. In the first, a diagnosis was made by a physician and in the second by an AI application to compare confidence in human and computer-based diagnosis. Results: The median age of participants was 45 (interquartile range 28-59), 58% were female ( n  = 154) vs 42% male ( n  = 110), 69% had completed at least a bachelor's degree, 88% were Caucasian ( n  = 233) vs 12% ethnic minorities ( n  = 31) and were from 12 states, mostly from the Upper Midwest. Participants had nearly equal trust in AI vs physician diagnoses. However, they were significantly more likely to trust an AI diagnosis of cancer over a doctor's diagnosis when responding to the version of the survey that suggested that an AI could make medical diagnoses ( p  = 9.32e-06). Though 55% of respondents ( n  = 145) reported that they were uncomfortable with automated robotic surgery, the majority of the individuals surveyed (88%) mistakenly believed that partially autonomous surgery was already happening. Almost all (94%, n  = 249) stated that they would be willing to pay for a review of medical imaging by an AI if available. Conclusion: Most participants express confidence in AI providing medical diagnoses, sometimes even over human physicians. Participants generally express concern with surgical AI, but they mistakenly believe that it is already being performed. As AI applications increase in medical practice, health care providers should be cognizant of the potential amount of misinformation and sensitivity that patients have to how such technology is represented.

The general public's attitudes, demands, and expectations regarding medical AI could provide guidance for the future development of medical AI to satisfy the increasing needs of doctors and patients. The objective of this study is to investigate public perceptions, receptivity, and demands regarding the implementation of medical AI. An online questionnaire was designed to investigate the perceptions, receptivity, and demands of general public regarding medical AI between October 13 and October 30, 2018. The distributions of the current achievements, public perceptions, receptivity, and demands among individuals in different lines of work (i.e., healthcare vs non-healthcare) and different age groups were assessed by performing descriptive statistics. The factors associated with public receptivity of medical AI were assessed using a linear regression model. In total, 2,780 participants from 22 provinces were enrolled. Healthcare workers accounted for 54.3 % of all participants. There was no significant difference between the healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers in the high proportion (99 %) of participants expressing acceptance of AI (p = 0.8568), but remarkable distributional differences were observed in demands (p < 0.001 for both demands for AI assistance and the desire for AI improvements) and perceptions (p < 0.001 for safety, validity, trust, and expectations). High levels of receptivity (approximately 100 %), demands (approximately 80 %), and expectations (100 %) were expressed among different age groups. The receptivity of medical AI among the non-healthcare workers was associated with gender, educational qualifications, and demands and perceptions of AI. There was a very large gap between current availability of and public demands for intelligence services (p < 0.001). More than 90 % of healthcare workers expressed a willingness to devote time to learning about AI and participating in AI research. The public exhibits a high level of receptivity regarding the implementation of medical AI. To date, the achievements have been rewarding, and further advancements are required to satisfy public demands. There is a strong demand for intelligent assistance in many medical areas, including imaging and pathology departments, outpatient services, and surgery. More contributions are imperative to facilitate integrated and advantageous implementation in medical AI., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: To characterize public perception of physicians' conflicts of interest (COIs) across medical and surgical specialties., Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional 6-arm randomized survey of a nonprobability sample from Amazon's Mechanical Turk occurred on December 11 to 16, 2018. Survey respondents were randomly assigned to vignettes that varied the physician specialty with COI. The primary outcome was mean difference in Mayer Trust, and the secondary outcome included the proportion who desire to discontinue care., Results: There were 1729 of 1920 respondents who completed the experiment (90.1% completion rate). Respondents were male (52.5%; n=907), white (71.4%; n=1234), and between the ages of 25 and 44 years (70.9%; n=1227). Mean ± SD Mayer Trust across the 6 specialties was 3.7±.60, with the only between-specialty differences observed for psychiatry compared with the other specialties (F=5.4; P<.001). The median dollar amount that would affect respondents' trust in a physician was $5000 (interquartile range, $100-$100,000). A total of 75.1% (n=1298) of respondents desired COI information, with 41.6% (n=720) discontinuing care. Age older than 34 years (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.7; 95%, CI, 0.49-0.99; P=.047), nonwhite race (aOR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.02-1.6; P=.03), educational attainment of 4 or more years of college (aOR, 1.31; 95% CI, 1.05-1.6; P=.016), and physician specialty as a psychiatrist (aOR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.03-2.2; P=.034) were predictors for discontinuing care., Conclusion: Public COI disclosure is a common method for managing financial conflicts. Although survey respondents were more likely to discontinue care with a physician with COI, they will act on this knowledge of COI differently depending on the specialty of the physician. The finding that psychiatry is an outlier may be a chance finding that warrants further confirmation. Continued efforts to ensure best practices for disclosure are required., (Copyright © 2019 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This article aims to assess if the status of the medical profession has been reinforced or weakened with the new public management. With this purpose, it collects the opinion of two international experts regarding situation in the United Kingdom, in order to apply some lessons to the Spanish case. Both agree that, far from losing status and power with the healthcare reform, the medical profession has protected its status and autonomy against other social agents such as managers, politicians and patients. However, the maintenance of the status quo has been at the expense of an intra-professional stratification that has caused status inequalities linked to social class within the medical profession., (Copyright © 2016 SESPAS. All rights reserved.)

Medical student interest groups are organizations that help expose students to different medical specialties and fields of medicine while in medical school. Military medicine interest groups (MMIGs) are a particular type of interest group that spreads information about military medicine, fosters mentorship, and camaraderie between students and military faculty, and increases the opportunities for leadership while in medical school. Surveys were sent to all U.S. medical schools to determine how many schools had an MMIG. If a medical school had a group, a second survey was sent to the student leader to determine more information about how their group operated (such as type of participants, funding sources, activities, faculty involvement, military health care provider involvement, etc.). Fifty-six percent of U.S. medical schools who responded were found to have an MMIG and most participants were students in the Health Professions Scholarship Program. Information about military medicine was found to be the biggest impact of having a group at a medical school and student leaders expressed they wished to have more military health care provider involvement. The results of this study could help start MMIGs at other medical schools, as well as give ideas to current MMIGs on how other groups operate., (Reprint & Copyright © 2016 Association of Military Surgeons of the U.S.)

The American public entrusts academic medicine with a varied portfolio of critical responsibilities: the thoughtful mentoring of future generations of doctors, the engagement of cutting edge discoveries, and the empathic treatment of patients with complicated illnesses. The erosion of time to perform these duties has led to an estrangement of our key professional values and thus a loss of public trust, the inability to recognize new diseases, reduced communication in our ranks, and physician dissatisfaction. Much of this is driven by an unbalanced focus on the business model of medicine, highlighting rapid patient transactions linked to professional income with financial incentives for high-volume care. Reversing the current trends requires a new type of leadership committed to long-held professional values and a recognition of what drives professional excellence. As internists and infectious diseases specialists without procedures in our practice, we are especially vulnerable to these trends.

Background: The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to measure laypeople's beliefs about the nature of medical knowledge and knowing (the EBAM). Such beliefs should be a target of increased research interest because they influence how people handle medical information, for example in shared decision making., Methods: An online survey was completed by 284 participants. Items assessed different aspects of laypeople's epistemic beliefs about medicine and explicitly focused on the appearance of medical knowledge in everyday life and the evaluation of different sources as a way to justify knowledge., Results: Factor analysis yielded a five-factor solution for the instrument. Dimensions covered by the instrument are certainty of medical knowledge, credibility of medical textbooks, credibility of medical information on the Internet, justification of medical knowledge, and preliminarity of medical knowledge., Conclusions: Results indicate that laypeople have meaningful beliefs about the nature of medical knowledge and the trustworthiness of different sources. The instrument developed seems promising for measuring laypeople's epistemic beliefs about medicine, which may help to increase patients' compliance in medical decision making.

Since the 1960s, Australian society and the medical profession have undergone enormous change. Our society has moved from a relatively homogeneous and conservative community, supported by limited government services, to one that is multicultural, focused on the individual and consumerism, and supported by extensive government programs, with health care a top public and political priority. A defining feature of contemporary society is its mistrust of institutions, professionals, public servants and politicians. The medical profession has changed from a cohesive entity, valuing generalism and with limited specialisation, to one splintered by ultra-specialisation and competing professional agendas. The medical workforce shortage and efforts to maintain the safety and quality of health services are putting acute pressure on the profession. Task transfer or role substitution of medical services is mooted as a potential solution to this pressure. This has the potential to drastically transform the profession. How task transfer will evolve and change medicine depends on the vision and leadership of the profession and a flexible pragmatism that safeguards quality and safety and places patient priorities above those of the profession.

The field of interventional radiology is currently at a crossroads. The position and role of the future interventionalist will be defined by the direction taken by the current generation of practitioners. There are four key issues that must be dealt with: (i) the dichotomous relationship between diagnostic and interventional radiology, (ii) the idea of the "hired gun" interventionalist versus that of the clinician interventionalist, (iii) the public's image of the interventional radiologist, and (iv) "turf wars" with other specialties.

Purpose: Although there is no supporting evidence, there is a perception that the public is unfamiliar with what an oral and maxillofacial surgeon does. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the knowledge of persons about the type of treatment rendered by 12 different specialties and to determine if such unfamiliarity is true only for oral and maxillofacial surgery or whether it occurs with other specialties., Patients and Methods: Two groups of patients, one in a dental setting (n = 101) and one in a general medical office setting (n = 157), were asked to match a list of 12 different specialists with list of 15 brief treatment options. Data related to level of education, gender, and age were also collected. Logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between correct identification of individual specialties and the demographic variables., Results: Subjects in both settings correctly matched an average of 72% of the specialists. The most commonly identified specialist in both groups was the gastroenterologist (90%), and the least recognized was the nephrologist in the dental setting (44%), and the otolaryngologist in the medical setting (53%). The oral and maxillofacial surgeon had an identification rate of 77%. Older and better-educated respondents correctly recognized the greatest number of specialists., Conclusions: The results of this study show that name recognition is not a problem faced only by oral and maxillofacial surgeons. It also shows that efforts directed at improving this situation should be aimed at the younger and less-educated population., (Copyright 2002 American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons)

Objective: To investigate social images associated with dentistry in comparison with nine other medical disciplines., Design: A questionnaire survey among members of the general public. Subjects were asked to state, in not more than five words, the images which they associated with each of the ten disciplines., Setting: Komaki City, Shikatsu Town and Nagoya City in Japan., Participants: 261 respondents from a convenience sample of 300 residents, not associated with any branch of medicine., Outcome Measures: Frequency distribution of word images used on at least five occasions and a correspondence analysis of the responses for the ten disciplines., Results: Of the 163 coded image items, 60 were related to internal medicine, 56 to dentistry, 55 to dermatology, 51 to orthopaedic surgery, 51 to ophthalmology, 50 to surgery, 47 to obstetrics and gynaecology, 43 to otolaryngology, 40 to paediatrics and 33 to psychiatry. Correspondence analysis applied to the 163 items and 10 medical disciplines indicated that three similar paired image groups were found, namely between dermatology and ophthalmology, surgery and orthopaedic surgery, and between dentistry and internal medicine, which were the more commonly encountered disciplines across all age groups. However, compared with the other specialities, dentistry had a significantly greater association with pain, this response being four times more common than for surgery., Conclusions: This group of members of the public in Japan perceived dentistry-associated images in a similar way to internal medicine, but the negative associations with pain need to be addressed by the dental profession and health educators alike.

Maxence Van der Meersch, got the Prix Goncourt in 1937. He was an important writer between the two world wars, by his inspiration and his realism he was related to the naturalism school. His works reflect his life, from 1937, after having discovered the christian faith, he devoted his live to it and militated through his writing for his convictions. "Corps et âmes", published in 1943 is a painting of the medicine in France at the end of the thirties. When he was published the book raised up a sharp polemic, badly accepted by medical world because of its realism without concession, on another hand it was welcome by general public and litterary critics. In an university town the author stages physicians, students, nurses, administrators, politicians and many other characters to paint a vast fresco of medical world and society, during this time. In whole he gives a greater share to mental pathology with the advent of new therapeutics and to tuberculosis wich had a great medico-social importance. Taking a fancy for doctor Carton's neo hippocratics theories, he fully bound himself in his book to broadcast that he thinks to be a new medical truth and then was led to contest scientific medicine which had, for him, lost his humanity. Suffering of lung tuberculosis, holding fast to his convictions he rejected any therapeutics except his diets and died January the 13th 1951. Beside his spiritual and bound features, "Corps et âmes" the quality of documentation and the accuracy of descriptions remains a testimony about physicians and medicine at second world war eve.

Taking as its point of departure the medicalization thesis and its limitations, this paper provides a critical discussion of certain more recent theoretical perspectives on life in contemporary society, and their relevance for understanding the relationship between modern medicine and the lay populace. In particular, attention is paid to the contours and existential parameters of life in 'late' modernity in terms of the following four key themes: (i) modernity as a 'reflexive' social order, (ii) 'risk' and the dialectic of scientific and social rationality; (iii) the "mediation' of contemporary experience; and (iv) lay 're-skilling' and the 'life political' agenda. On the basis of this, it is argued that far from being simply passive and dependent, a 'critical distance' is beginning to emerge between modern medicine and the lay populace; a situation which resonates with broader social trends and currents within society at large.

This investigation offers a comprehensive analysis of the relative social prestige of various medical specialties. The specialties were evaluated in terms of ascribed esteem by a lay sample of 400 respondents. Several attributes were then tested in order to measure their contribution to overall prestige. The results affirm that a stable prestige hierarchy exists among medical specialties, with certain ones, such as surgery and cardiology, consistently ranked at the top, and others, such as dermatology and psychiatry, consistently resting at the bottom. A specialty's relative standing in perceived income and assigned social value are the best predictors of its hierarchical position, with income being the single best predictor. Moreover, the prediction of a specialty's prestige appears to improve significantly when both variables--income and value--are considered inclusively.