Preferences for food safety and animal welfare – a choice experiment study comparing organic and conventional consumers

Food quality attributes such as food safety and animal welfare are increasingly influencing consumers’ choices of food products. These attributes are not readily traded in the markets. Hence, stated pref-erence methods have proven to be valuable tools for eliciting preferences for such non-traded attributes. A discrete choice experiment is employed, and the re-sults indicate that consumers in general are willing to pay a premium for campylobacter-free chicken and for improved animal welfare; and they are willing to pay an additional premium for a product containing both attributes. Further, we find that organic consumers have a higher willingness to pay for animal welfare than other consumers, but they are not willing to pay more than conventional consumers when it comes to their willingness to pay for avoiding campylobacter

Standards of resuscitation during inter-hospital transportation: the effects of structured team briefing or guideline review - A randomised, controlled simulation study of two micro-interventions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Junior physicians are sometimes sent in ambulances with critically ill patients who require urgent transfer to another hospital. Unfamiliar surroundings and personnel, time pressure, and lack of experience may imply a risk of insufficient treatment during transportation as this can cause the physician to loose the expected overview of the situation. While health care professionals are expected to follow complex algorithms when resuscitating, stress can compromise both solo-performance and teamwork.</p> <p>Aim</p> <p>To examine whether inter-hospital resuscitation improved with a structured team briefing between physician and ambulance crew in preparation for transfer vs. review of resuscitation guidelines. The effect parameters were physician team leadership (requesting help, delegating tasks), time to resuscitation key elements (chest compressions, defibrillation, ventilations, medication, or a combination of these termed "the first meaningful action"), and hands-off ratio.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Participants: 46 physicians graduated within 5 years. Design: A simulation intervention study with a control group and two interventions (structured team briefing or review of guidelines). Scenario: Cardiac arrest during simulated inter-hospital transfer.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Forty-six candidates participated: 16 (control), 13 (review), and 17 (team briefing). Reviewing guidelines delayed requesting help to 162 seconds, compared to 21 seconds in control and team briefing groups (p = 0.021). Help was not requested in 15% of cases; never requesting help was associated with an increased hands-off ratio, from 39% if the driver's assistance was requested to 54% if not (p < 0.01). No statistically significant differences were found between groups regarding time to first chest compression, defibrillation, ventilation, drug administration, or the combined "time to first meaningful action".</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Neither review nor team briefing improved the time to resuscitation key elements. Review led to an eight-fold increase in the delay to requesting help. The association between never requesting help and an increased hands-off ratio underpins the importance of prioritising available resources. Other medical and non-medical domains have benefited from the use of guidelines reviews and structured team briefings. Reviewing guidelines may compromise the ability to focus on aspects such as team leading and delegating tasks and warrants the need for further studies focusing on how to avoid this cognitive impairment.</p

Real-life efficacy of pregabalin for the treatment of peripheral neuropathic pain in daily clinical practice in Denmark:the NEP-TUNE study

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to provide evidence regarding the real-life efficacy of pregabalin in the treatment of peripheral neuropathic pain (NeP) in Denmark. METHODS: In this prospective, observational, noninterventional study, pregabalin (Lyrica(®)) was prescribed following usual clinical practice. Compared with baseline, the primary study end points after 3 months of observation were changes in 1) the average level of pain during the past week, 2) the worst level of pain during the past week, and 3) the least level of pain during the past week. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to perform paired analyses, and a multivariate regression analysis investigated factors driving change in pain. RESULTS: A total of 86 of the 128 patients included were regarded as efficacy evaluable (those completing 3 months of pregabalin treatment). Patients (59 years) were long-time sufferers of peripheral NeP, and 38% of them had comorbidities. The majority had previously been treated with tricyclic antidepressants or gabapentin. The average dose of pregabalin was 81.5 mg/d at baseline and 240 mg/d after 3 months. A clinically and statistically significant improvement of 2.2 points in the average level of pain intensity was found after 3 months. The higher the pain intensity at baseline, the higher was the reduction of the pain score. Positive results were also found for pain-related sleep interference, patients’ global impression of change, quality of life, and work and productivity impairment. Twenty-one patients reported 28 adverse events. CONCLUSION: This real-life study indicates that for some patients (two-thirds), addition of pregabalin for peripheral NeP helps to reduce their pain intensity significantly

How to increase the effectiveness of agri-environmental subsidy schemes through knowledge of farmer perceptions-a choice experiment on pesticide free buffer zones

Danish farmers have been far less interested in agri-environmental subsidy schemes than anticipated. We use choice experiments to estimate 486 Danish farmers’ preferences for a number of policy relevant scheme-characteristics. Subsidy schemes for pesticide free buffer zones along hedgerows are used as a case and analysed using a random parameter logit framework. By quantifying farmers’ preferences in monetary values, we are able to assess the relative importance of individual scheme-characteristics. Farmer’s assessments of the administrative burden are captured by estimating how they value free-of-charge assistance for the application procedure. To our knowledge, this measure of administrative burden has not been tested before. Our results indicate that payment size was perceived to be the most important scheme characteristic narrowly followed by flexible contract terms (an option to cancel the contract and contract length) and still of significant importance but less so are practical management restrictions (choice of buffer zone width, using fertilizer, and reduced administrative burden).Farmer preferences, participation, agri-environmental schemes, choice experiments, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis, Farm Management,