Preparing the foundations for video-based, practice-placement support: establishing the role from a students’ perspective

Currently, many placement-based health programme students within the UK are supported through face-to-face visits from university staff. Whilst cited in literature as being of value, the face-to-face nature of this contact is not supported. Alternatives including video-based communications methods offer the potential for cost effective, environmentally responsible support. However, in order to establish the fitness for purpose of alternative approaches, the content and purpose of current support needs to be understood. This project aimed to investigate student perceptions of the ideal content and purpose of clinical support visits, and alternatives to the current face-to-face approach. Fifty-six Physiotherapy undergraduate students responded to questionnaires with a further nine participating in a follow-up focus group. Participants emphasised the value of the visit in guiding learning, ensuring progression and resolving arising issues, and highlighted concerns over alternative approaches. Focus group participants discussed the importance of personal and professional confidence in directing requirements for support, and went on to propose a menu of options for methods of communication.Whilst limited in some applications, video technologies may be one of the options. Overall, however, this project supports the need for consideration of individualised learning journeys within curriculum planning

“Avoiding or approaching eyes”? Introversion/extraversion affects the gaze-cueing effect

We investigated whether the extra-/introversion personality dimension can influence processing of others’ eye gaze direction and emotional facial expression during a target detection task. On the basis of previous evidence showing that self-reported trait anxiety can affect gaze-cueing with emotional faces, we also verified whether trait anxiety can modulate the influence of intro-/extraversion on behavioral performance. Fearful, happy, angry or neutral faces, with either direct or averted gaze, were presented before the target appeared in spatial locations congruent or incongruent with stimuli’s eye gaze direction. Results showed a significant influence of intra-/extraversion dimension on gaze-cueing effect for angry, happy, and neutral faces with averted gaze. Introverts did not show the gaze congruency effect when viewing angry expressions, but did so with happy and neutral faces; extraverts showed the opposite pattern. Importantly, the influence of intro-/extraversion on gaze-cueing was not mediated by trait anxiety. These findings demonstrated that personality differences can shape processing of interactions between relevant social signals

AI in Pathology: What could possibly go wrong?

The field of medicine is undergoing rapid digital transformation. Pathologists are now striving to digitize their data, workflows, and interpretations, assisted by the enabling development of whole-slide imaging. Going digital means that the analog process of human diagnosis can be augmented or even replaced by rapidly evolving AI approaches, which are just now entering into clinical practice. But with such progress comes challenges that reflect a variety of stressors, including the impact of unrepresentative training data with accompanying implicit bias, data privacy concerns, and fragility of algorithm performance. Beyond such core digital aspects, considerations arise related to difficulties presented by changing disease presentations, diagnostic approaches, and therapeutic options. While some tools such as data federation can help with broadening data diversity while preserving expertise and local control, they may not be the full answer to some of these issues. The impact of AI in pathology on the field's human practitioners is still very much unknown: installation of unconscious bias and deference to AI guidance need to be understood and addressed. If AI is widely adopted, it may remove many inefficiencies in daily practice and compensate for staff shortages. It may also cause practitioner deskilling, dethrilling, and burnout. We discuss the technological, clinical, legal, and sociological factors that will influence the adoption of AI in pathology, and its eventual impact for good or ill

The relationship between social anxiety, shyness and blushing

The diagnosis of social anxiety disorder (SAD) has seen substantial changes in the last 35 years from its first appearance in the DSM-III in 1980 up to the most recent ones in the DSM-5. Throughout all these changes, this disorder, previously called social phobia, is still considered one homogenous entity with only one specifier (“performance only”) introduced in the DSM-5 revision with specific fears or associated personality profiles not being considered relevant clinical markers to define SAD subtypes. However, our therapeutic experience suggested substantial particularities associated with the fear of blushing in patients with SAD. Some patients presenting this profile, historically called “erythrophobia”, seem to have a very specific type of social anxiety that does not include shyness and other characteristics of classical SAD. In a study conducted in a sample of 450 new consecutive outpatients seeking treatment for SAD, we compared 142 subjects with fear of blushing without other social fears, 97 subjects with fear of blushing with other associated social fears and 190 SAD subjects without fear of blushing. The group with pure fear of blushing presented a different profile when compared with the two other groups: later age of onset, less comorbidity, lower behavioral and temperamental inhibition, i.e. less shyness, and higher self-esteem. Furthermore, from a therapeutic point of view, some specific strategies such as the Task Concentration Training have shown to be particularly effective in fear of blushing. We will further argue the validity of a possible “fear of blushing” subtype of SAD.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.</jats:sec