PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Have a seat, doctor: Study suggests eye-level connection makes a difference in hospitals

Review of research to date suggests patients feel better when providers sit or crouch during bedside conversations, and a new study seeks to add more solid evidence

2024-07-26
(Press-News.org) Doctors and others who take care of hospitalized patients may want to sit down for this piece of news.

A new study suggests that getting at a patient’s eye level when talking with them about their diagnosis or care can really make a difference. Sitting or crouching at a hospitalized patient’s bedside was associated with more trust, satisfaction and even better clinical outcomes than standing, according to the new review of evidence.

The study’s authors, from the University of Michigan and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, note that most of the studies on this topic varied with their interventions and outcomes, and were found to have high risk of bias. Their findings are published in a systematic review in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

So, the researchers sat down and figured out how to study the issue as part of their own larger evaluation of how different non-verbal factors impact care, perceptions and outcomes.

Until their new study ends, they say their systematic review should prompt clinicians and hospital administrators to encourage more sitting at the bedside.

Something as simple as making folding chairs and stools available in or near patient rooms could help – and in fact, the VA Ann Arbor has installed folding chairs in many hospital rooms at the Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Kettles VA Medical Center.

Nathan Houchens, M.D., the U-M Medical School faculty member and VA hospitalist who worked with U-M medical students to review the evidence on this topic, says they focused on physician posture because of the power dynamics and hierarchy of hospital-based care.

An attending or resident physician can shift that relationship with a patient by getting down to eye level instead of standing over them, he notes.

He credits the idea for the study to two former medical students, who have now graduated and gone on to further medical training elsewhere: Rita Palanjian, M.D. and Mariam Nasrallah, M.D.

“It turns out that only 14 studies met criteria for evaluation in our systematic review of the impacts of moving to eye level, and only two of them were rigorous experiments,” said Houchens. “Also, the studies measured many different things, from length of the patient encounter and patient impressions of empathy and compassion, to hospitals’ overall patient evaluation scores as measured by standardized surveys like the federal HCAHPS survey.”

In general, he said, the data paint the picture that patients prefer clinicians who are sitting or at eye level, although this wasn’t universally true. And many studies acknowledged that even when physicians were assigned to sit with their patients, they didn’t always do so – especially if dedicated seating was not available.

Houchens knows from supervising U-M medical students and residents at the VA that clinicians may be worried that sitting down will prolong the interaction when they have other patients and duties to get to. But the evidence the team reviewed suggests this is not the case.

He notes that other factors, such as concerns about infection transmission, can also make it harder to consistently get to eye level.

“We hope our work will bring more recognition to the significance of sitting and the general conclusion that patients appreciate it,” says Houchens. Making seating available, encouraging physicians to get at eye level, and senior physicians making a point to sit as role models for their students and residents, could help too. 

A recently launched VA/U-M study, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and called the M-Wellness Laboratory study, includes physician posture as part of a bundle of interventions aimed at making hospital environments more conducive to healing and forming bonds between patient and provider.

In addition to encouraging providers to sit by their patients’ bedsides, the intervention also includes encouraging warm greetings as providers enter patient rooms and posing questions to patients about their priorities and backgrounds during conversations.

The researchers will look for any differences in hospital length of stay, readmissions, patient satisfaction scores, and other measures between the units where the bundle of interventions is being rolled out, and those where it is not yet.

In addition to Houchens and the two former students, the authors of the systematic review are U-M and VA hospitalist Ashwin Gupta, M.D., Whitney Townsend of the U-M Taubman Health Sciences Library, VA chief of medicine and U-M professor Sanjay Saint, M.D., M.P.H., and Jason Engle, M.P.H. Saint and Engle are part of the VA Center for Clinical Management Research, and Saint is a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Houchens, Gupta, and Saint are faculty in the Division of Hospital Medicine of the Department of Internal Medicine at Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center.

The newly published study was funded by U-M and VA resources. The newly launched study is funded by AHRQ grant HS28963-01.

Effect of Clinician Posture on Patient Perceptions of Communication in the Inpatient Setting: A Systematic Review. Journal of General Internal Medicine, DOI:10.1007/s11606-024-08906-4, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-024-08906-4

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

BRCA1/2: Why men should be screened for the ‘breast cancer gene’

2024-07-26
More and more studies show that men face risks of cancer from BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations that are most often associated with breast and ovarian cancers in women.   According to a July 25 JAMA Oncology review article by experts at Fred Hutch Cancer Center and University of Washington, newly developed national screening guidelines offer hope for identifying the cancer risk of BRCA mutations in men through genetic testing and tailored cancer screening. “Not enough men are getting genetic testing to see if they carry a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene ...

Researchers develop state-of-the-art device to make artificial intelligence more energy efficient

Researchers develop state-of-the-art device to make artificial intelligence more energy efficient
2024-07-26
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (07/25/2024) — Engineering researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have demonstrated a state-of-the-art hardware device that could reduce energy consumption for artificial intelligent (AI) computing applications by a factor of at least 1,000. The research is published in npj Unconventional Computing, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature. The researchers have multiple patents on the technology used in the device.  With the growing demand of AI applications, researchers have been looking ...

The Texas Heart Institute provides BiVACOR® Total Artificial Heart Patient update

The Texas Heart Institute provides BiVACOR® Total Artificial Heart Patient update
2024-07-26
Houston, Texas, July 26, 2024 – The Texas Heart Institute (THI), a globally renowned cardiovascular health center, and BiVACOR®, a leading clinical-stage medical device company, are pleased to provide an update on the condition of the first patient to receive the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH) implant on July 9, as part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Early Feasibility Study (EFS). On July 17, eight days following the BiVACOR TAH implant, a donor heart became available and was transplanted into the ...

The ancestor of all modern birds probably had iridescent feathers

The ancestor of all modern birds probably had iridescent feathers
2024-07-26
The color palette of the birds you see out your window depend on where you live. If you’re far from the Equator, most birds tend to have drab colors, but the closer you are to the tropics, you’ll probably see more and more colorful feathers. Scientists have long been puzzled about why there are more brilliantly-colored birds in the tropics than in other places, and they’ve also wondered how those brightly-colored birds got there in the first place: that is, if those colorful feathers evolved in the tropics, or if tropical birds have colorful ancestors that came to the region from somewhere else. In a new study published ...

A rare form of ice at the center of a cool new discovery about how water droplets freeze

A rare form of ice at the center of a cool new discovery about how water droplets freeze
2024-07-26
Tokyo, Japan – Ice is far more complicated than most of us realize, with over 20 different varieties known to science, forming under various combinations of pressure and temperature. The kind we use to chill our drinks is known as ice I, and it’s one of the few forms of ice that  exist naturally on Earth. Researchers from Japan have recently discovered another type of ice: ice 0, an unusual form of ice that can seed the formation of ice crystals in supercooled water. The formation of ice near the surface ...

Embargoed - Researchers devise novel solution to preventing relapse after CAR T-cell therapy

2024-07-26
Lack of persistence of CAR T cells is major limiting step in CAR T-cell therapy Made by fusing an immune-stimulatory molecule to a protein from cancer cells, the therapy selectively targets CAR T cells and enhances their functionality and persistence in the body, extending their attack on cancer. The therapy, called CAR-Enhancer (CAR-E), also causes CAR T cells to retain a memory of the cancer, allowing them to mount another attack if cancer recurs BOSTON – Even as they have revolutionized the treatment of certain forms of cancer, CAR T-cell therapies ...

Lampreys possess a ‘jaw-dropping’ evolutionary origin

Lampreys possess a ‘jaw-dropping’ evolutionary origin
2024-07-26
EVANSTON, Ill. --- One of just two vertebrates without a jaw, sea lampreys that are wreaking havoc in Midwestern fisheries are simultaneously helping scientists understand the origins of two important stem cells that drove the evolution of vertebrates. Northwestern University biologists have pinpointed when the gene network that regulates these stem cells may have evolved and gained insights into what might be responsible for lampreys’ missing mandibles. The two cell types — pluripotent blastula cells (or embryonic stem cells) and neural crest cells — are both “pluripotent,” ...

"Just like your mother?" Maternal and paternal X-chromosomes show skewed distribution in different organs and tissues.

2024-07-26
A new study published in Nature Genetics by the Lymphoid Development Group at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences has reveals that the contribution of cells expressing maternal or paternal X chromosomes can be selectively skewed in different parts of the body. The study leverages human data from the 1000 Genomes Project combined with mouse models of human X chromosome-linked DNA sequence variation to advance our fundamental understanding of development in biologically female individuals who have two X chromosomes.    Until now, it was thought that the usage of maternal and paternal X-chromosomes was similar throughout the body. The ...

Conflicting health advice from agencies drives confusion, study finds, but doctors remain most trusted

2024-07-26
Distrust of health experts and credulity towards misinformation can kill. For example, during the Covid-19 crisis, high-profile health experts received death threats while misinformation went viral on social media. And already long before the pandemic, easily preventable but potentially serious diseases had been making a comeback around the world due to vaccine hesitancy – often powered by conspiracy theories. But what feeds this lack in trust in reliable sources of health information? Can it perhaps be mitigated? Those are the subjects of a new study in Frontiers in Medicine by researchers from the US. “Here we show that individuals who ...

Towards next-gen indoor lighting: novel tunable ultrasonic liquid crystal light diffuser

Towards next-gen indoor lighting: novel tunable ultrasonic liquid crystal light diffuser
2024-07-26
It is no mystery that light is essential to human life. Since the discovery of fire, humans have developed various artificial light sources, such as incandescent lamps, gaslights, discharge lamps, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The distribution and intensity of artificial lights indoors are important factors that affect our ability to study and work effectively and influence our physical and mental health. Consequently, modern artificial light sources are designed with these psychological elements to achieve the best aesthetics. ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Public confidence in U.S. health agencies slides, fueled by declines among Democrats

“Quantum squeezing” a nanoscale particle for the first time

El Niño spurs extreme daily rain events despite drier monsoons in India

Two studies explore the genomic diversity of deadly mosquito vectors

Zebra finches categorize their vocal calls by meaning

Analysis challenges conventional wisdom about partisan support for US science funding

New model can accurately predict a forest’s future

‘Like talking on the telephone’: Quantum computing engineers get atoms chatting long distance

Genomic evolution of major malaria-transmitting mosquito species uncovered

Overcoming the barriers of hydrogen storage with a low-temperature hydrogen battery

Tuberculosis vulnerability of people with HIV: a viral protein implicated

Partnership with Kenya's Turkana community helps scientists discover genes involved in adaptation to desert living

Decoding the selfish gene, from evolutionary cheaters to disease control

Major review highlights latest evidence on real-time test for blood – clotting in childbirth emergencies

Inspired by bacteria’s defense strategies

Research spotlight: Combination therapy shows promise for overcoming treatment resistance in glioblastoma

University of Houston co-leads $25 million NIH-funded grant to study the delay of nearsightedness in children

NRG Oncology PREDICT-RT study completes patient accrual, tests individualized concurrent therapy and radiation for high-risk prostate cancer

Taking aim at nearsightedness in kids before it’s diagnosed

With no prior training, dogs can infer how similar types of toys work, even when they don’t look alike

Three deadliest risk factors of a common liver disease identified in new study

Dogs can extend word meanings to new objects based on function, not appearance

Palaeontology: South American amber deposit ‘abuzz’ with ancient insects

Oral microbes linked to increased risk of pancreatic cancer

Soccer heading does most damage to brain area critical for cognition

US faces rising death toll from wildfire smoke, study finds

Scenario projections of COVID-19 burden in the US, 2024-2025

Disparities by race and ethnicity in percutaneous coronary intervention

Glioblastoma cells “unstick” from their neighbors to become more deadly

Oral bacterial and fungal microbiome and subsequent risk for pancreatic cancer

[Press-News.org] Have a seat, doctor: Study suggests eye-level connection makes a difference in hospitals
Review of research to date suggests patients feel better when providers sit or crouch during bedside conversations, and a new study seeks to add more solid evidence