Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Entscheidungspsychologie


Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Blog

Archive for August, 2018

women and power

I just read Mary Beard’s Women & Power and – ouch…

Beard traces the silencing and neglect of female voices from classical antiquity to today’s meeting rooms: She’s seamlessly able to link Ms Triggs (see cartoon below) to Telemachus’ shushing of his mother, Penolepe, in Homer’s Odyssey. Misogyny, it appears, goes way back.

Let’s make sure we don’t perpetuate this in our meeting rooms. The NYT piece by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant on speaking while female offers a couple of examples for changes in meeting culture that could help.

New paper on the influence of information structuring in discharge communication

We investigated the effects of information structuring and its potential interaction with pre-existing medical knowledge on recall in simulated discharge communications. Specifically, we asked students to view a set of well-controlled videos of a simulated discharge communication filmed from the point-of-view of a patient (the videos and data are available for download on OSF). Our goal was to investigate whether different ways of structuring information could provide differential memory benefits.

For this purpose, we randomly assigned our proxy-patients to one of four conditions: A natural conversation (NC) condition, that was not explicitly structured, a structure (S) condition that presented information organized by topics, and a book metaphor (BM) and post organizer (PO) conditions that also presented information structured by topics but, in addition, included a synopsis, either at the beginning or at the end of discharge communication, respectively. We assessed proxy-patients’ recall, perception of communication quality, and the students’ pre-existing medical knowledge.

The main results were that we did not find an overall difference in recall between the conditions, albeit in comparison to the natural conversation (i.e., unstructured) condition, proxy-patients in all information structuring conditions (S, BM, PO) more strongly recommended the physician to family and friends. More interestingly, we found an interaction between pre-existing medical knowledge and recall in the structured Book Methaphor (BM) condition (see figure below). This suggests that structured discharge communication complemented by the initial synopsis may be particularly beneficial to individuals with lower pre-existing medical knowledge.

Siegrist, V., Langewitz, W., Mata, R., Maiori, D., Hertwig, R., & Bingisser, R. (2018). The influence of information structuring and health literacy on recall and satisfaction in a simulated discharge communication. Patient Education and Counseling. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2018.08.008

New paper on emergency patients’ end-of-life decisions

We investigated emergency patients’ end-of-life decisions in to assess prevalence of decisions not to receive resuscitation (“do not attempt resuscitation”, or DNAR). We also examined potential medical and economic consequences and estimated the relative contributions of patient characteristics (such as age) and physicians to such decisions. The study was a single-centre retrospective observation at the University Hospital of Basel, including emergency patients with subsequent hospitalization between 2012 and 2016.

We found that decision to NOT receive resuscitation are common in emergency patients (ca. 23%) and that these decisions are associated with age (OR = 4.0, 95% CI = 3.6–4.3) and non-trauma presentation (OR = 2.3, 95% CI = 1.9–2.9). In other words, older and chronic disease patients are more likely to forego resuscitation. Mortality was significantly higher (OR = 5.4, CI = 4.0–7.3) and use of resources significantly lower (OR = 0.7, CI = 0.6–0.8) in patients with DNAR, suggesting that these decisions have important personal and economic consequences. One thing that was really interesting and, potentially, important, is that we found evidence for physician effects! This implies that there were significant effects of physician on whether someone decided to in principle forego resuscitation. Unfortunately, we cannot tell what about the physician or his/her communication led to such an effect but this finding raises questions about the autonomy of patients in their end-of-life decisions. It could be important to investigate further how these decisions are being made and how physicians impact these outcomes.

Siegrist, V., Eken, C., Nickel, C. H., Mata, R., Hertwig, R., & Bingisser, R. (2018). End-of-life decisions in emergency patients: Prevalence, outcome, and physician effect. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1093/qjmed/hcy112

A short recap on the SWE doctoral program’s writing week

As writing is an important skill in a researcher’s life, in June, we PhD students (Regina, Matt and Peter) organized for the first time a short writing workshop for PhD students of the SWE. We went to a monastery in the infamous pilgrimage site of Trois Epis in Alsace, France.

For three days, we worked on our respective manuscripts or posters, discussed research and gave feedbacks to each other’s progress. The personnel’s care and reverent calmness of the place supported the productive atmosphere during the time.

Due to the quiet and peaceful environment, I could concentrate more thoroughly on my current manuscript and wrote the whole method and result section for this paper. Additionally, I focused on the introduction part of another paper where I also made a huge progress. In the late and early hours of the days in Trois Epis I read a couple of important. – Matt

During the writing week, I started to give a form to the paper from my first PhD project. First, I prepared the outline and then I continued on writing the introduction, methods and results sections. Moreover, I conceptualized and finished a poster for a summer school. – Regina

I used the time to design a conference poster about one of my current projects. After I finished that, I used the remaining time for writing up a methods section for a future manuscript. All in all, it was a very productive time with no external distractions. I am really grateful for this opportunity. – Peter

Before the writing week started, we attended a “guided writing mini-workshop” in which a writing coach of the University of Basel gave useful recommendations about the style of our manuscripts.

In sum, all of us appreciated the progress we’ve made under these special working conditions and we therefore hope to establish the writing week as an annual event of the SWE doctoral program.